


Alpha Savior, Omega Queen

by nookiepoweredamazon



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Consent Issues, F/F, Omega Verse, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:19:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9270965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookiepoweredamazon/pseuds/nookiepoweredamazon
Summary: Emma’s least favorite part of her parent’s fairytale world is the unfamiliar Alpha Beta Omega dynamics at play. Learning that Regina is her perfect match makes their trip to Neverland a disaster.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is revised from my [original drabble](http://nookiepoweredfic.tumblr.com/post/149609464474/swan-queen-alphabetaomega-during-her-brief) on tumblr and expanded into a multi-chapter monstrosity, since people seemed to dig the idea.

During her brief foray into the Enchanted Forest, Emma Swan was displeased to discover corsets and swordfighting weren’t the most novel parts of her parent’s world. Everyone had _smells_ , powerful smells that either repelled or attracted, soothed or agitated, and they were broken up into classifications that meant nothing to Emma but everything to those around her.   
  
Snow had been so proud to discover her daughter was an Alpha, just like her. “I knew you would be,” she’d said with her eyes sparkling, hands on her confused daughter’s cheeks, “You’re so brave and selfless. I knew you would be.”  
  
Personally, Emma thought the whole thing was complicated and a little...classist, making all these assumptions about people based on their hormonal signature. This wasn’t the damn nature channel.   
  
So months later, Emma pinched her nose as the Jolly Roger bobbed to the water’s surface in Neverland. She had been hit hard by the smells of those around her, as if she had just walked into an very strong perfume shop and all the fragrances were fighting for her attention.  
  
“Oh, come on,” Emma groaned. “Why is this happening here? We’re not in the Enchanted Forest. Isn’t Neverland its own thing?” If she had known Neverland shared the Enchanted Forest’s most annoying quirk she would have brought about a million nose plugs.  
  
The moon shone down brightly on them, cool air whipping through Emma’s hair and filling her nostrils mercifully with the clean scent of salty sea as the sails filled and the ship began to move. She dropped her hand and inhaled warily, trying to aim her face into the breeze.  
  
“Neverland is an extension of the Enchanted Forest, so the same rules apply,” Snow answered, catching her breath. Emma could already feel her body unconsciously posturing against Snow’s similarly Alpha smell and bossy tone, though the effect was dampened by their shared genetics. “It won’t impact the Lost Boys or Henry, they’re too young, but we’ll certainly notice it.” Snow was already looking at David like the world began and ended with him. They both breathed in deeply and Emma wrinkled her nose.  
  
David was a Beta, paired irreversibly to Snow’s Alpha; so even if they hadn’t smelled like family to Emma they would have smelled like a mated pair, so drenched in one another’s scent that to an outsider on either end of the spectrum they were utterly unappealing.  
  
“I really hate this hierarchical biology bullshit.” Emma pulled her hair back and tied it hurriedly at the base of her neck. The too-strong scent of her own shampoo was making her eyes water. “It’s just...invasive.”  
  
It was a strange sensation, the very visceral need to identify and categorize people as alluring or off-putting, as an ally or a threat. It made Emma feel as if she were playing a very simplistic game of chess, except she’d never been very good at chess and everyone was watching.  
  
The most uncomfortable part by far was the attraction. Emma had felt sudden desire before, but never the type of out of context want that she had felt in the presence of Aurora, the first Omega she had met. Aurora had smelled good to her in a way that tiptoed up and down her spine and ached low in her belly without a single eye ever being batted, and if Mulan hadn’t spent the whole time posturing like the most possessive Beta this side of the equator Emma might have had more than one bad idea.  
  
“Aye, but it has its perks,” Hook chimed in with a roguish grin. He was eyeing Emma with intent. Reflexively she rolled her eyes, tugging her jacket collar up over her nose.  
  
She already knew what Hook would smell like. He walked the line between attractive and off-putting, depending on what kind of cues he was putting out. Betas were confusing to Emma on a sensory level and he had got her head spinning a few times on their adventure up the beanstalk, in much the same way Emma imagined he had spun Cora’s head. He could certainly make himself appear harmless when it suited him, though Emma would hazard that was rarely the truth.  
  
“You’ll get used to it, Miss Swan.” Rumple smiled, more than a little mirth in his eyes.  
  
A cloud of magic surrounded him that seemed to completely mask his scent, whatever that was. Perks of being the Dark One, Emma supposed, and found herself wishing that her own magic could place her in a bubble. Maybe it could, maybe that was possible.  
  
Emma looked around automatically for the one woman who could teach her such a thing and found Regina standing against the rail with her arms folded, looking exceptionally cross. She fixed Emma with her most disparaging glare, lip curling as she sniffed the air gingerly. “Alpha. Of course you are, _Savior._ ”  
  
Emma inhaled, past the salt and sea, and her eyes widened. Something low in her stomach tumbled and the hairs at the back of her neck stood on end. Her mouth felt suddenly dry.  
  
Regina, the most powerful sorceress this world had ever seen, was an Omega.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta’d by the beautiful [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/). <3  
> (If you like my fic, you might also enjoy my [original fiction](http://www.dreasilvertooth.com).)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the lovely comments on the first chapter. <3 You guys rock.  
> 

Emma practically fled the deck of the Jolly Rodger, pushing past her parents’ words and Hook’s jaunty attempts to follow her. Regina’s disgusted expression hung vividly in her mind, confusing the heat creeping up her spine.

For an instant, breathing in the smell of Regina’s skin even from six feet away had felt like getting high. Emma’s skin felt flushed and everything felt good, like the time she’d taken ecstasy and spent three hours rubbing her face on pillows and blankets.

It was that, but _hungry_.

There had been a faint sheen of perspiration on Regina’s chest, Emma had seen it in a sudden rush of Regina-based awareness, and every nerve in her body had begun screaming at her to lick it off. She was suddenly conscious how full and soft Regina’s hair always looked, as if it was just begging to have hands in it, pulling it just enough to make that mouth tip open and—

Inside the ship, behind closed doors, Emma stared at her clenching hands in shock. Nothing this intense had ever happened with Aurora. Wanting Aurora was like an itch, a constant and frustrating awareness of something she’d like to sink her claws into, which at its worst made her edgy and hot. Wanting Regina, on the other hand, was like catching fire. Her entire body lit up and nothing else felt important, no other subject could hold her thoughts. The absence of contact she’d never had was almost unbearable. Emma’s stomach hung in a horrible place between arousal and nausea. She clenched her thighs; she was uncomfortably wet.

Regina’s scowl kept reappearing in her mind, shaming Emma efficiently out of any illusions this flood of hormones might have given her about where they stood. But who was Regina to be all haughty and superior? Emma hadn’t chosen to be an Alpha, just like Regina undoubtedly hadn’t _chosen_ to be an Omega. If she had any choice in the matter Emma would have removed herself from this stupid equation entirely.

Her heart was pounding loudly in her ears, and she was vaguely aware that she had started sweating.

“Emma, honey,” Snow’s voice came softly through the cabin door, “can I talk to you?”

Emma didn’t answer, she couldn’t bring herself to speak or unlock the door. She just stood breathing heavily, fists clenched and mind whirling.

“This is nothing to be ashamed of. I should have warned you about Regina. I’m sorry. I forget sometimes that this is all new to you.”

Emma tried to focus on the conversation, but was currently wondering how Regina’s lipstick would taste and if the skin of her neck was as soft as it looked, if it would darken and tan beneath the Neverland sun or bruise pink and purple under teeth.

“The way you’re feeling,” Snow pressed on gently, “it’s normal.” Emma was reminded with a little shock of horror that her mother could probably smell her. “It’s one of the first things Alphas learn in our world, that our reaction to Omegas isn’t our fault,” Snow soothed. “Regina, she’s… She’s not someone you’d ever feel that way about normally. We know that and no one is judging you.”

Emma’s stomach churned. She had a lot more anxiety about uncontrollably objectifying Regina than she did about her parents thinking she might be genuinely hot for their mortal enemy.

She balled up her fists in her jacket pockets and took slow, measured breaths, counting down from fifty and then back up again. Eventually her mother’s footsteps faded down the hall, leaving Emma alone with her thoughts. Some vague idea was bothering her, struggling to take shape in her clouded mind.

Yes, she wanted nothing more than to feel Regina’s heartbeat flutter, to taste her pulse point and make her breath catch; but even through her haze Emma knew that there was something else to it.

This desire was not blind and faceless as it had been with Aurora. This feeling was every wry smile, every slowly raised eyebrow, every sly remark. It was Regina snarling at Emma beneath a wounded apple tree, eyes flashing dangerously. It was the way she looked at Henry like the world began and ended with him, holding his little chin. It was them standing together just hours ago down in the mines, side by side as they saved the world.

Emma not only wanted Regina, on some fundamental level she also _liked_ Regina; and that seemed to make all the difference.

Of course, if Regina’s reaction had been anything to go by…

The feeling was not mutual.  


* * *

 

Dinner was an uncomfortable affair. Emma had decided that asking Hook to explain how people showered on this 19th century disaster of a ship, knowing that it was probably a matter of sponges and buckets, would just give him far too much opportunity to suggest he help.

Normally she could shrug off his advances, but she was a special type of furious following her outburst and the news that Gold had vanished in a puff of smoke was not helping. The hungry ache that had been clawing at her insides since she’d smelled Regina was manifesting itself into an acute rage just waiting to be unleashed; and now that they had no real way to find Neverland she was also afraid.

How were they going to get to Henry? And if they did manage to get to him, what were their odds without the Dark One on their side?

So Emma sat, smelling awkwardly like sex, speaking to no one, and eating rehydrated vegetables and grains that had been in the ship’s belly for far too long. It was strange to be at a table with her parents, who seemed unable to look away from one another, Regina who smelled so incredibly good it made Emma wet and queasy all at once, and Hook who seemed to think this combination of company was highly amusing.

It did not help that Regina didn’t appear to be sharing Emma’s pain. She was sitting as composed as ever with nothing more than a flush to her cheeks. This made Emma even angrier, and the rum Hook had put in the drinking water to disinfect it was not helping anything, given that Emma now had to choose between dehydration and being slightly drunk.

“So, you can get us to Neverland even without Gold?” Snow asked.

“Aye,” Killian drawled, tapping his hook idly over the over the map they had spread between them. “Though it will take a good bit longer. We came up with no bearings, we could be anywhere around the island.”

“I could do a locator spell,” Regina suggested, “but it may risk exposing our position to Pan.”

It was the first time Regina had spoken in Emma’s presence since their arrival, and she seriously considered throwing herself out the porthole at the reaction her body had to that low, smooth voice.

Emma glared fiercely down at the wood grain as her pulse sped up. She felt all eyes turn momentarily to her, then drift mercifully away again. Only Hook’s gaze lingered.

“You know, luv...” he leaned over to whisper. “I’m more than happy to help with whatever… frustration our resident Omega is hitting you with.” He cast her a roguish grin. “I’m plenty practiced in soothing the stray starving Alpha, especially when they’re as hungry as y-”

Charming had stood up, hands slamming down on the table. “Don’t you _dare_ speak to my daughter that way! Show some respect, you filthy-”

“Easy, mate!” Killian laughed, holding hand and hook up in a pacifying gesture. “The lass is in real pain, I was only offering-”

“Don’t,” Emma growled, glaring viciously at him. When she spoke it was in a deep voice, a large voice, and the room fell silent. “ _Don’t_ offer.”

The room stilled and her gaze, as if pulled by gravity, drifted to Regina. Now Regina’s cheeks were definitely dark and she was wearing a strangely stricken expression, watching Emma and seemingly holding her breath.

Then Emma inhaled and there was something, a subtle change barely detectable past the two seething Betas and Emma’s own hormone cocktail. A faint, fleeting scent had just come off of Regina.

Something that smelled suspiciously like desire.

Emma scarcely had time to register this before Regina stood and was making her way out of the galley. On instinct Emma lept to her feet and skirted around the other people in their crowded corner, darting after her.

She had to follow her, had to talk to her. Maybe Regina was just as miserable, just as uncomfortable... Just outside the room Emma grabbed Regina by the elbow, turning her around. “Hey, listen-”

Regina’s eyes lit up like all the fires of hell.

“Don’t _touch_ me,” she snarled, snatching her arm back. “Just like an Alpha,” she hissed, her lip curling, “thinking you can take whatever you want. Well I have news for you, Savior. I will not weather any more abuse by the Charming line!”

There was a tremendous amount of fury behind Regina’s words, but even in her startled state Emma could smell the fear beneath. She glanced down and saw that Regina’s hands had begun to shake.

“Alpha or not, if you touch me again while we’re in Neverland...” Regina snatched viciously at the air in front of Emma’s face, eyes more wild than Emma had ever seen them. Her voice was a deadly serious growl. “I will rip your beating heart out myself.”

Then she turned on her heel and, in an instant, had vanished in a puff of purple smoke, leaving Emma gaping in the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta’d by the wonderful [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/). <3  
> (If you like my fic, you might also enjoy my [original fiction](http://www.dreasilvertooth.com).)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, your comments are the best. <3 Thanks guys. I'm aiming for weekly updates, we'll see if I can swing it!

To say that Emma was sulky was a great understatement. Regina’s stark rejection, a terrible mix of suppressed fear and obvious hate, was sitting like a lead ball in Emma’s stomach and haunting her every time her mind drifted sexward.  
  
“She doesn’t want you,” Emma repeated viciously to herself in an undertone throughout the sleepless night, a mantra that her body refused to hear. She lay with her hands clasped firmly over her chest, refusing point blank to let them drift south as she glared daggers into the ceiling. “She doesn’t even like you, so fucking cool it.”  
  
But she couldn’t fucking cool it. Her body felt like it was on fire.  
  
She hadn’t seen Regina since their row in the hall, but little traces of her smell here and there told Emma that she was still on the ship. Emma felt like she was going mad all through the night and into breakfast. Totally apart from feeling guilty and aroused in varying proportions, by the end of the meal she’d gone from woozy to straight up nauseous.  
  
She could smell everything in high definition now, from the other bodies on the ship to the lacquer on the wood, and it was too much. Eating, it turned out, had been a mistake. Snow had just finished explaining that they had decided to skip the locator spell, to maintain the element of surprise, when Emma was forced to dash upstairs where she got sick over the side of the ship.  
  
The rest of the day was devoted to sailing blindly around in every direction trying to locate Pan’s island on the horizon. In Emma’s case, this meant alternating between hiding in her bunk with highly inappropriate, Regina-centric thoughts bounding relentlessly around in her head and gathering her strength to man the deck. Both these activities were made horrible by the fact that she kept vomiting.  
  
Snow and Charming set her up with buckets and sponges for bathing and a bed with fresh blankets, which Emma wished she could stop sweating in. Hook sent her below deck to rest at every opportunity and told her, rather more respectfully than she expected, to keep her pretty face out of the sun. He even popped down mid-day to toast Neal and give Emma the heirloom sword that she now wore, strung pirate-like across her back in memory of her first love.  
  
Hook was all right, Emma decided, when she was too sick to be sexy.  
  
Yet, as the sun began to creep down towards the horizon, there was still no sign of Regina. The sunset cast a warm glow over the deck and painted the cresting waves gold. Emma surveyed the picturesque scene from her place hung heavily over the rail.  
  
Her stomach was now empty of anything even remotely resembling food. In fact, at this point Emma was pretty sure her body had rejected everything she’d ever eaten in her life. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this sick, and the over-sensitized skin and lingering arousal was just adding insult to injury.  
  
“I don’t know if your parents told you,” came a low familiar voice, “but this reaction is normal.”  
  
Emma startled. She blinked and turned sluggishly to find Regina leaning on the rail a few feet to her right. She appeared relaxed, but it was a sort of forced calm that didn’t quite carry into her shoulders. Her eyes were fixed firmly on the horizon, and Emma could smell an undercurrent of fear coming off of her in waves.  
  
“Most of us get sick the first time the hormones hit, it’s like a dreadful right of passage.” Regina turned dark eyes onto Emma fleetingly, surveying her crumpled posture, before flicking back to the ocean. “You’re just unlucky enough to have yours on this travesty of a ship.”  
  
“The rocking is not helping,” Emma agreed weakly, her knuckles going white as the ship gave a particularly nasty lurch. The only mercy in it was she seemed to be so far gone that Regina’s presence went more or less unnoticed by her body. Emma swallowed a fresh wave of nausea. “This didn’t happen the first time I was in the Enchanted Forest.”  
  
Regina’s expression looked pinched and strained, as if standing in Emma’s presence was defying every instinct she had; but her voice remained quiet, almost gentle. “For Alphas, I believe the sickness begins the first time you’re exposed to what would be considered a compatible Omega.”  
  
Emma had no idea what a compatible Omega meant, but Regina was obviously it.  
  
“So I’m allergic to you,” Emma snorted. “That’s rude. The merciful thing to do would have been to kill me.”  
  
Regina cracked a smile, the first since they’d left for Neverland, and something in Emma heartened at the sight of it. “As if I haven’t tried.”  
  
Emma smiled weakly and let her head droop one more time, feeling the boat rock back and forth. Then she took a determined swig out of the flask Hook had provided, swished the burning alcohol around, and spat into the water. She repeated the motion until her mouth felt scorched but clean. She straightened up, turned to Regina, and squared her shoulders.  
  
“About last night,” Emma started, and Regina’s expression instantly darkened. Emma pressed on quickly. “I just wanted to talk, Regina, I would _never-_ ” She forced herself to hold Regina’s eyes, her expression sober. “You’re my son’s mom and, fuck, even if you weren’t I’m not an animal.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust.  
  
Regina watched her silently, arms folded and her expression calculating, but she did not interrupt.  
  
“This is all new and it’s making me feel insane, but I’m still...me.” Emma had to pause for a long moment, not sure she could safely keep talking with her stomach churning like that. Then it subsided and she took another swig of liquor, spat it out, and continued. “So, unless you’re going to start killing people or setting off curses left and right, we’re on the same side. We’re on Team Henry, and I’m not going to do a damn thing to jeopardize that.”  
  
Regina watched her critically for what felt like forever, an unreadable look on her face. Then finally she turned back to the horizon and hummed.  
  
“I may have...overreacted,” Regina conceded. Her gloved fingers drummed absently over the rail. “Being an Omega...it is often a cruel fate. I’m sure your parents neglected to tell you about that particular element of life in the Enchanted Forest.”  
  
Emma’s eyes widened, something apprehensive settling in her chest. “Yeah, they did.”  
  
“Well,” Regina said matter-of-factly, straightening out her blazer unnecessarily, “you’ve never given me reason to believe that you are anything other than ridiculously, revoltingly chivalrous, and given that you weren’t raised in a society that normalizes…” She cleared her throat. “I don’t think I have to worry about you.”  
  
Emma summoned what remained of her pride and said, as strongly as possible for a woman who was almost deathly ill, “No, you do not.”  
   
Regina turned to watch her for a few more moments with that same indecipherable, almost pained expression, then reached into her jacket pocket and produced a heavy glass vial. She held it up to the light for Emma’s examination. It contained a clear solution which glowed with the telltale shimmer of magic.  
  
“Sip this," she said. "It will dampen the effects of your hormones and settle your stomach.”  
  
Emma looked at the potion like she’d never seen anything so beautiful, then cast a disbelieving stare upon Regina. “You had this the whole time?”  
  
“Since this morning.”  
  
“I’ve been puking over the rail all day,” Emma croaked.  
  
Regina raised an unapologetic eyebrow, lips twitching in an ghost of a smile. “So you have.”  
  
Well, Emma supposed that was one way to send a message.   
  
She watched Regina unceremoniously pluck a hair from her own head, open the large vial, and drop it in. For several seconds the surface spluttered and hissed, then the hair dissolved and the potion turned a deep shade of purple. She shook it several times, then held the solution out to Emma wordlessly.  
  
It glowed brightly from between Regina's fingers, and after a brief moment of wondering if it could be poison Emma decided that if it was at least she’d be out of her misery. She grabbed it, popped it open, and took a long swig.  
  
The potion was surprisingly smooth. It had a sweet taste like cinnamon and apples and the relief was almost instant. Her insides, which had been positively writhing, relaxed. Some of the overwhelming buzzing along her skin seemed to dull. Emma inhaled and the smells around her felt suddenly more bearable. They were still distinct, but no longer impossible to ignore.    
  
“Oooh yeah.” Emma sagged in relief, leaning on the rail. She breathed easily for the first time in almost twenty-four hours. “That’s the stuff.”  
  
Regina hummed, mildly. “Take another sip every few hours. It should dull your reaction to me and make our continued partnership more bearable.” Emma stomach did an involuntary flip at the word partnership. “Although what you hold is the last of it,” Regina warned. “I didn’t exactly bring my potion kit on this little venture.”  
  
“Thank you,” Emma said earnestly. She glanced from Regina to the potion in her hand and then back again. “Uhm. Don’t you need some?”  
  
When Regina laughed it was the high-pitched, unnatural sort of laugh that dragged like nails on a chalkboard. When she smiled, it did not meet her eyes. “No, dear. I have a lifetime of horrors to cool my libido.”  
  
Emma opened her mouth to speak, then when words failed she instinctively reached out to touch Regina’s shoulder. At the last second she remembered Regina’s death threat and thought better of it, pulling her hand back awkwardly and turning to stand beside Regina, looking out into the waves.  
  
“I’m sorry, that’s…” Emma swallowed. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Regina had turned and was looking at her curiously, as if something in Emma’s response was unexpected. There was a softness to Regina’s face that had not been there a moment ago. Emma inhaled and felt that increasingly familiar desire drag like a warm touch up and down her spine, but steeled herself against it. She would not think about it. She would be respectful. She could do this.  
  
Regina opened her mouth and looked as if she were on the brink of saying something when Hook’s voice called suddenly from across the deck.  
  
“Land ho!” he bellowed. Snow and Charming clamored through the hatch and ran up beside them, shielding their eyes from the last of the vanishing light. The sunset had painted the sky in golds and pinks, a stark contrast to the dark green island looming in the distance.  
  
Emma leaned forward, her heart pounding wildly. “Neverland.”  
  
Beside her Regina whispered, achingly, “Henry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta’d by the wonderful [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/). <3  
> (If you like my fic, you might also enjoy my [original fiction](http://www.dreasilvertooth.com).)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used bits of canon dialogue from 3x01 in this chapter which I thought worked particularly well with the A/B/O dynamics. Shh, don’t tell the powers that be.

Night hung heavy over Neverland, shrouding the ship and the shore in equal darkness. They worked under a faint moon, docking in a secluded cove beneath Regina’s strongest cloaking spell.    
  
Even still, the sinking feeling in Emma’s stomach every time a nearby branch rustled or a shadow moved along the shore told her that these precautions might not be enough to hide their arrival from Pan’s many eyes. This was his island, after all, and Emma could feel the strength of his hold over it the instant her feet touched the ground. There was a magic here, unsettlingly boyish while still feeling dark, deep, and ancient.     
  
The combination felt wrong, and the fine hairs at the back of Emma’s neck prickled.    
  
Regina seemed to feel it too; her jacket was drawn tight around her and her eyes darted warily around the cove as they worked. Snow shouldered her bow and arrow and even Hook seemed to grasp the hilt of his sword unnecessarily, constantly watching the treeline as they disembarked.   
  
When they finally stood on the beach, black water lapping at their heels and the ship behind them invisible but for the tide ebbing strangely around it, a thick silence fell between them. It was one thing to say they were here to rescue Henry, but quite another to stand in the shadow of a huge, impenetrable forest and know that he could be anywhere, that there were enemies of unknown number and power waiting for them, and that without the Dark One they were magically outmatched.   
  
The magnitude of their situation hit Emma like an icy wave as they stood there looking into dark trees for what felt like a very long time. She opened her mouth to speak but the air was thick and sticky with salt, heady with her companions’ anxiety, and she closed her lips wordlessly around the taste.   
  
“I do believe we have our work cut out for us,” Hook said, finally breaking the silence.   
  
“Careful what you believe here,” Snow warned, eyes wide. “Gold said this place runs on belief.”   
  
“He’s right,” Regina agreed, her expression solemn. “I can feel it all around us. The magic here... it’s powerful.” She pulled off a leather glove and rubbed her forefinger and thumb together, as if she were examining some invisible quality to the air. “Frankly, I’d be surprised if Pan doesn’t already know we’re here.”   
  
A wave of fear rolled off of Regina, who was probably thinking of Henry and wondering what was happening to him right now, and the scent spurred something to life in Emma that had not been there a moment before.    
  
“Good,” Emma growled. She felt a characteristic ferocity rising up inside her, like it always did when her back hit the wall. She turned a determined glare upon her companions. “It’s time we stopped running.”   
  
Everyone looked back at her with varying levels of surprise, Regina arching an eyebrow.   
  
“Look, I know we haven’t exactly been the tightest group. I especially have been... distracted.” She fought the impulse to glance apologetically at Regina, who was watching her carefully. “But now that we’re here we need to work as a team.”   
  
“You want us to be friends?” Regina asked with a disbelief that made Emma’s heart sink. She shot a pointed glance at Snow, whose expression soured. “After all that’s happened between us?”   
  
“I don’t want or expect that,” Emma said firmly. “I know there’s a lot of history here, and a lot of hate. But you know what? Great.” She threw her hands up. “We need heroes, villains, pirates… Alphas, Betas, Omegas. We need every viewpoint and every skill.”   
  
“And what’s your skill, Swan?” Hook drawled with a smile. “Besides pining for a good lay.”   
  
“I’m a mother,” she snapped, her voice lowering into a commanding growl, “and now I’m also your leader. So either help me get my son back or get out of the way.”    
  
Hook’s smile did not fade, but extended to his eyes. Snow and Charming watched her, that increasingly familiar parental pride creeping into their expressions.    
  
“Emma is right,” her father beamed, his wife nodding along beside him. “We need to work together. For Henry.”   
  
“I agree,” Regina said, looking as if it pained her to do so. “However, let me be perfectly clear about one thing.”   
  
She drew herself up to her full height. There was something in the timbre of her voice and the curl of her lip that was reminiscence of the Evil Queen. She flexed her fingers the same way the rest of them gripped their weapons, something deadly flickering in her eyes.  
  
“I will not be following the rules which bind the white knights.” She cast a disdainful look at Emma’s parents. “I intend to win, not play hero. _ Anyone _ who steps between me and my son is as good as dead, Lost Boys included.”   
  
“I’m with the witch on this one,” Hook said. “They’ve nearly sunk my ship too many times to get mercy from me.”   
  
Something cold sunk in the pit of Emma’s stomach. She struggled to find words, and when she did speak, her voice was edged in panic. “Regina,” she said almost pleadingly, “the Lost Boys... they’re  _ children _ . We can’t, we won’t _-_ ” She could feel Snow nodding along beside her. They were all parents here in one way or the other, surely they could agree on that much.    
  
“If you Alphas,” Regina rolled her eyes, “want to try and lead them home, for the lesser beings to sing of your chivalry from the mountaintops, then wonderful.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “When your merry band gets thrown off a cliff by Pan then I’ll be waiting to take Henry home.” Her eyes were hard as she looked, pointedly, at Emma. “I don’t care if anyone else makes it off this island.”    
  
Emma startled at the intensity of her stare, at the sentiment behind it, and she hadn’t even begun to unpack her feelings on the matter when Regina turned on her heel and strode up the cove, spine impossibly straight and her head held high.    
  
Hook shrugged and swung his bag over his shoulder, making to follow after her. Emma shot him a questioning look.    
  
“Sorry, luv,” Killian crooned. “I quite fancy you when you’re not yelling at me, but I’m here for Bae’s son. Not a hoard of underage savages.”   
  
As he moved off to explore the treeline, Emma’s parents stood to either side of her, Charming rubbing his neck and Snow shaking her head.    
  
“Typical Omega,” Snow sighed, watching Regina’s purposeful stride.    
  
Emma turned, her frustration mounting at the rapidly unraveling situation. This was not what she had meant by  _ work as a team. _ “What is that supposed to mean?” Regina didn't choose to be an Omega. Given the way people talked about them, Emma doubted very much that anyone would choose to be an Omega.   
  
Snow looked taken aback, but kept her voice gentle. As if reading Emma’s mind, she said, “Emma, you know people don’t just become Alphas, Betas, and Omegas for no reason, don’t you?”    
  
Emma scowled. "Of course I didn’t." She didn’t know anything about this world, and she was feeling the knowledge gap more and more all the time.    
  
“According to legend,” Charming explained, “there are formative moments in our youth which shape what we will become.”   
  
“Alphas,” Snow continued, gesturing to Emma and herself with a smile, “stand up for themselves and others in pivotal moments. We are brave, natural leaders, and fight for what we believe in no matter the odds, inspiring others to do the same. Whether that’s good or bad depends on the Alpha.”    
  
Emma thought of the Alpha Cora, fighting for herself and for power, then of her mother fighting for her kingdom. She thought of herself, fighting just to survive.    
  
“Betas,” Charming said as Snow gave him a warm look, her hand on his arm fondly, “can both lead and follow. A good Beta is unwaveringly loyal. We inspire others to be their best selves when they forget.”   
  
Emma considered this. When they had fallen through a portal, her father had stepped up and led the town, worked tirelessly to get them back, then when his wife returned he had slid almost effortlessly back into a supporting role. If the stories were true, her mother had given up fighting the Evil Queen until her father had given her the strength to keep trying.    
  
Her parents were looking at one another again, love bright in their eyes, and Emma had to clear her throat to get their attention.    
  
“And Omegas?” She prompted, warily.   
  
“Omegas…” Snow began, watching Emma carefully. “Omegas are individuals that, in their youth, either lost the fight for what they believed in or never fought at all.”    
  
Emma’s spirits plummeted horribly as she thought of manipulative Cora, with her cold voice and her hard eyes, and imagined a young Regina trying to stand up to her. It felt an impossible feat. Cora was, as Emma had readily told Regina at the first opportunity, a real piece of work.    
  
“At best, Omegas are resourceful, cunning, and beautiful. Their biology is specifically designed to draw in protectors.” Snow’s voice took on a pleading sort of note. “Emma, don’t you see? Regina doesn’t care about saving anyone but Henry. Omegas just want to survive.”    
  
Charming looked kindly down at Emma, and Snow placed a motherly hand on her shoulder.    
  
“It’s not your fault that you’re feeling this way, sweetheart — Omegas affect unmated Alphas the most. You want to protect her, to stand up for her even when it doesn’t make sense. But the way that you’re feeling for Regina... it isn’t real.”   
  
Something roared to life in Emma’s chest as she looked into her mother’s pitying eyes and her father’s hopeful smile. Ears ringing, she brushed off the hand and stepped back, her face screwing up in indignation.   
  
“You do know you’re talking about Regina? Regina Mills, Mayor of Storybrooke, the Evil-Freaking-Queen?” Emma barked out a laugh. “I don’t think she needs anyone to protect her.”   
  
“Oh believe me, Emma,” Snow said darkly, “we know exactly who we’re talking about.”   
  
“This is a woman who  _ stole your kingdom _ while you two hid in the woods and you’re trying to tell me that, because she is an Omega, she is incapable of taking care of herself.” Emma’s voice had started to rise almost against her will, and when Snow squared her shoulders against her it only made it worse. “Do you understand how batshit crazy that sounds?”   
  
Her parents glanced at one another.   
  
“Well... it’s not as if that exactly worked out for her, is it?” Snow asked with a condescending little smile. “Leading rarely works out for Omegas. People don’t respect them and Regina is a classic case of going about it the wrong way. She’s always been that way. You forget, Emma, that I’ve known her longer than anyone.”    
  
Emma was suddenly struck by the horrifying image of a young Snow bossing Regina around, her own personal Omega to practice leading, and potion or no potion, Emma felt like she might be sick again.    
  
“Holy shit.” Emma threw her hands up. “You are all prejudiced, classist, whatever! No wonder Regina hates Alphas if you all talk about her that way. Just because she had to keep her head down as a kid, you can’t know what she had to do to survive _-_ ”   
  
She had to stop and draw a deep, long breath because her brain was starting to feel starved of oxygen, body tight with anger and her words coming too fast. Beneath the ready scent of the sea and the sand, something in Snow’s sweat was infuriating her, and the suggestion that Regina was tricking her somehow was making her head spin.   
  
“It’s just a fucking smell,” she finally ground out, “it doesn’t make her any less than you or me.”   
  
“Not less,” Charming said kindly, “just... different.”   
  
“Why didn’t you tell me she’s a compatible Omega?” Emma snapped. It was a shot in the dark, a sudden left turn in the conversation, but if their expressions were any indication, she’d hit the nail on the head. “What does that even mean?”   
  
“Emma…” Snow’s eyes flitted down, uncertainly. “We don’t want to... confuse you.”   
  
“Well you know what’s confusing?” Emma snarled. “When my own parents start keeping things from me and I have to get all my information from their mortal enemy. I mean seriously, what the hell?”   
  
Snow reached out towards her. “Honey _-_ ”   
  
Emma held up a hand. “I need you both... to not talk to me.” She drew another deep breath. She was seething and could hardly remember ever feeling this angry. She wanted desperately to punch both of them right in the face. Her mother opened her mouth to speak and Emma held up a finger. “Do not, or I will lose it.”   
  
They let her go. Emma stomped up the beach glaring daggers at every single tree. The need to fight someone, anyone, was so strong that she almost wished Pan would pop out of the next shadow just so she’d have someone to hit.    
  
Emma was so deep in her anger, digging her heels aggressively into the sand, that the sound of someone clearing their throat from shockingly near made her jump.    
  
Regina was leaning back against a dark, knotted tree with her arms folded, watching Emma with another one of those unreadable expressions. She wasn’t nearly as far from their conversation as Emma had thought.    
  
“You hear all that?” Emma asked, shouldering her gear more firmly.    
  
Regina looked her over fleetingly, then fixed her eyes forward. “Some.”    
  
A silent moment fell between them in which Regina appeared to be thinking something over. Then she lifted her chin and said in a very dignified voice, “I do hope you make it off this island alive.”   
  
“Oh.” Emma blinked, caught in another dizzying change of topic. “Thanks.”   
  
Regina only flicked her wrist disdainfully in the direction of her parents, who were still talking in hushed tones up the cove. “Them, not so much.”   
  
“Fair.” Emma stared into the almost impenetrable line of trees, searching them for movement, then said, “I think we should split into two groups to find Henry. We’ll go in one, they can go in the other.”   
  
Regina raised an eyebrow speculatively. She had started to smell impossibly good again, the blood pumping heavily in Emma’s veins, and suddenly fighting wasn’t the only thing she desperately wanted to do. She broke eye contact to take another swig of potion, which she had transferred to a leather flask at her hip.    
  
“I just can’t stand another word out of their mouth,” Emma said, tipping her head back, “and we’re not gonna cover enough ground this way.”   
  
There was a pause, in which Regina unfolded her arms and pulled off her gloves, pocketing them. “They’ll send the pirate with us,” she said mildly, “to chaperone.”   
  
“If he talks too much we can gag him.”   
  
Regina looked at her in surprise. Her lips twitched, threatening a smile. “You know Miss Swan, you’re starting to grow on me.”   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta’d by the wonderful [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/), who seriously raises the quality of my writing in every way. <3  
> (If you like my fic, you might also enjoy my [original fiction](http://www.dreasilvertooth.com).)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Hopefully the fact that it’s the longest chapter yet will help you forgive me. :) More canon dialogue used in this one, twisted to fit my agenda.
> 
> Content warning: Discussion of marital rape.

The firelight flickered, beautiful and ghostly against a Neverland midnight. The slow, deep breaths of the sleeping came from beneath crude log structures thrown up to protect against wind and rain, arranged just close enough to feel the heat of the fire. Killian snored lightly from beneath his blankets and Snow and Charming huddled closer together, muffling one another’s sleep sounds in their tight embrace.  
  
The first watch was Emma’s, but Regina had made no move to rest. She just sat with her coat drawn tight around her, shoulders hunkered down against the cold and eyes darting periodically along the treeline. Shadows shown in the faint, tired lines of her face.  
  
“You know, I’ve got this,” Emma said in a whisper that still felt impossibly loud. Pan’s forest was deadly quiet, no insects, no birds, no sign at all of the living. It was like camping in a tomb. “If anything happens I’ll wake you. I’ll get you when it’s your turn.”    
  
Regina gave a short, derisive laugh, her expression a grimace. “Like I can sleep with my son out there.”  
  
Emma had felt much the same way. Her parents had reluctantly agreed to split the group in order to cover more ground, but only on the condition that it waited until morning. She’d immediately volunteered to take first watch, too alive with a nervous, terrified energy to rest.  
  
“Suit yourself.”  
  
They lapsed into silence, listening to the crackling of the fire. Regina watched without any real interest as Emma rearranged fresh logs over those collapsing into hot coals, blowing on the new wood to help it catch. She angled them absently into a careful pyramid, enough to let air flow through and keep the fire bright and blazing.    
  
“You’ve done this before.”  
  
Emma looked up, then let her shoulders jump in a shrug. “I never got to go camping, but a few of the times I ran away it got cold.” She looked into the fire, brushing a hand over her forehead absently. “It’s sort of relaxing, keeping the fire going.”  
  
Regina only hummed. She’d started the fire with an easy flick of her wrist, but Emma had been the one keeping it alive. “You have soot on your face.”  
  
Emma huffed and settled back in her seat on a log, dragging the hem of her gray tank top over her face and rubbing furiously. She opened her eyes a few seconds later to find Regina watching her with an odd expression, lips pressed tightly together and her hands clasped, as if to resist reaching out for something.  
  
Emma blinked, then hastily dropped her shirt back down over her bared stomach.  
  
“Uh.”  
  
Regina looked away wordlessly, and they both pretended not to smell the other as that never-ending mix of fear and desire flared up in both of them, interrupting an otherwise peaceful moment. Emma reached reflexively for her potion, sipping it surreptitiously.  
  
“Can I ask you something?”  
  
Regina looked up, then said, “I don't suppose I can stop you.”  
  
“You mentioned…” Emma narrowed her eyes at the fire, finally plucking up the courage to ask one of the dozen questions that had been on the tip of her tongue all evening. “Before, you said that being an Omega is a cruel fate.” She looked up at Regina, brow furrowed. “Why?”  
  
“You would ask the complicated questions first,“ Regina said grimly, though she sounded more weary than annoyed. She crossed one leg over the other, her back straightening and the muscles of her neck suddenly corded and tight.  
  
The following silence stretched on for so long that Emma thought she wasn’t going to get an answer. She had just resigned herself to a night spent in partially awkward silence when Regina’s voice came again, strangely hollow.  
  
“Simply choosing one's own fate… As an Omega, choice is an act of rebellion.”  
  
Emma waited, unmoving, as Regina seemed to consider what to say next; then watched with some amazement as the other woman’s entire posture changed. It was as though someone slid free the invisible pin holding her spine in place, and though Emma didn’t think the verb slump would ever be regal enough for Regina, she did something very much like it.  
  
“I was in love with a stable boy.” The timbre of her voice was low and smooth, oddly detached from her brittle expression and bright eyes. “An Alpha, but one of no rank, merit, or money.”  
  
Regina waved a hand dismissively, as if these things were of no consequence, and on a gut level Emma wrestled with this new information. The mayor put so much stock in poise and power, but the queen had once been in love with a peasant. It occurred to Emma suddenly how little she knew Regina; how little, perhaps, anyone knew her.  
  
“We were to run away together, but…” Regina drummed her fingers over her knees and said, grimly, “Mother found out.”  
  
“Cora.” Emma swallowed.  
  
She remembered the energy and scent that surrounded Cora as powerful and dangerous. Two seconds into meeting her and Emma had told her exactly what she’d wanted to know, fallen like a house of cards, and it had taken more than a little backbone to stand up to her later, even with Snow standing behind her.  
  
“Did… did she…?”  
  
“Kill him?” Regina sighed. “Of course she did.”  
  
Emma pictured the heart of an unsuspecting stable boy crumbling like dust in Cora’s gloved hand, envisioned Regina’s accompanying scream, and looked pointedly down at her feet.  
  
She tried to wrap her head around growing up with that for a mother and decided that, in the end, maybe orphan wasn’t the worst case scenario.  
  
“Your mother was an Alpha,” Emma prompted. With Cora and Snow as the Alphas in Regina’s life it was no surprise that she detested the smell.  
  
“Yes,” Regina said darkly, “and as such she had every legal right to give me away to Leopold.“  
  
Emma had been afraid of that. The undercurrent of _second class citizen_ had been so strong around the title of Omega that she was hardly surprised. “Was my grandfather…?”  
  
“Leopold was a Beta,” Regina explained. “Betas are allowed to rule. They are actually considered the most kind and just rulers because, in theory, they understand the struggles of an Omega better than an Alpha ever could.”  
  
Emma rested her chin in her hands, her expression grave. “I’m getting the vibe that’s false advertising.”  
  
Regina let out a hollow laugh, and any lingering light in her eyes seemed at once to die.  
  
“Willful Omegas do not make for a happy marriage nor are they treated with respect, even by Betas. At best I was a babysitter, with,” Regina rolled her eyes but looked distinctly nauseous, “marital obligations.”  
  
Emma’s stomach lurched and suddenly she felt even worse about the attraction she couldn’t control. Regina looked back over the fire with her jaw set, her shoulders tense like a woman who was used to some terrible weight pressing down on her, and no apology Emma could muster seemed like nearly enough. She fought the desire to cover the other woman’s hands with her own, gripping her jumping knee instead.  
  
Finally she managed, in a rough voice, “I don’t know how you put up with that.”  
  
“I didn’t.” Regina turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow and looking utterly unapologetic. “I killed him.”  
  
Emma stared at Regina with a dawning mix of horror and awe, then dropped her head into her hands. This was her grandfather, Snow’s beloved parent and the kingdom’s cherished king. If the stories of his greatness were true then the only mistake King Leopold ever made was crossing Regina.  
  
Of course, like so many others, it had been the last thing he did.  
  
“I don’t understand why I’m telling you any of this.” Regina said softly, resting her chin on her palm and staring at Emma with an unreadable expression. “It seems that this bond is playing tricks on the both of us.”  
  
The logs had begun to crumble out of Emma's perfectly formed pyramid. Regina made no move to add more wood, but uncurled her fingers lazily to flick sparks into the fading flame, igniting corner bits that had previously avoided catching fire.  
  
Regina looked somehow softer in that moment than Emma had ever seen her without Henry under her arm. Her hair was in loose, sea-frizzed waves and the makeup was long since scrubbed from her face. That blue blazer still sat high on her shoulders like armor, but the shirt beneath had been unbuttoned almost to the bra, exposing a long expanse of olive skin that looked smooth and warm in the firelight.  
  
“What is a compatible Omega?” Emma asked in a low tone, trying to keep the predatory rumble out of her voice. The delicate shape of Regina's collarbone looked suddenly inviting, that ache between Emma’s legs back in full force.  
  
“I think what you mean,” Regina said wryly, “is why did your parents not tell you that I am a compatible Omega.”  
  
“Bingo.” Emma spared a glance for her sleeping parents, whose breathing still came slow and steady. They looked so content like that, wrapped up tight in one another’s arms, breathing the same air.  
  
Regina spindled her fingers together and examined Emma, one eyebrow raised.  
  
“It’s important to understand, I think, that there are no unbiased explanations behind the tiered dynamics of our world. The Enchanted Forest does not have science as you know it. Therefore, explanations of the roles as I know them, their reasons for being and how they coexist, are more the stuff of legends than of fact; a cultural explanation for a naturally occurring phenomenon.”  
  
“So I’m reading a book of fables,” Emma said, “not watching the nature channel.”  
  
“Precisely. And remember that, like any narrative, this particular account has been altered to suit those who tell it.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Regina leaned back and flicked a few more sparks at dying portions of the fire, though it did little to ignite the already blackened logs.  
  
“Alphas are supposed to be leaders, Omegas followers, and Betas capable of going one way or the other. Alphas are generally characterized as brave, Betas as loyal, and Omegas as... well.” Regina shrugged. “Cunning, although no one actually likes that in an Omega.”  
  
Emma tilted her head, not sure she understood. “What characteristic _do_ people like in an Omega?”  
  
Regina smiled that same empty smile. “Accommodating is probably the nicest way to put it.”    
  
“Accommodating,” Emma repeated flatly, screwing up her face. If she had been asked to list five hundred words which described Regina, _accommodating_ would definitely not make the cut.  
  
Regina brushed idly at her pants legs, coated in a light dusting of dirt from an evening in the jungle. Emma had been surprised to find Regina equal to the task of setting up camp, though she prefered to levitate than to lift. She’d stacked the firewood they were burning now in a neat pile from the comfort of her seat, fingers dancing through the air like a puppeteer as the logs dragged themselves into place.  
  
“Omegas are rare,” Regina allowed, “and generally characterized the way I believe women were in your world many years ago. We are considered to be less intelligent, less independent. We are written off as too emotional, but at the same time we are highly prized and sought after for our looks and for our heats.”  
  
Emma felt the blood drain from her face. Her nostrils flared and she tried not to sound hoarse. “Your _what_?”  
  
“Heats, dear.” Regina looked momentarily amused, pleased at Emma’s discomfort. She crossed and uncrossed her legs casually. “It is legend that those who mate an Omega, especially in their heat, become stronger, braver, and cleverer.”    
  
“You’re like... sex batteries?” Emma said weakly.  
  
“In theory. That kind of thinking makes us prized brides and grooms, but little else.”  
  
Emma followed the intuitive leap. “So, an Omega Queen…”  
  
“I was considered an abomination.”  
  
Regina’s expression was strange mix of fierce pride and deepest sadness, her fingers twirling idly through the air as she made the remaining sparks furl and dance before her. They shaped themselves into the vague outline of a castle, then crumbled at her bidding into ash.  
  
“I was feared. Of course,” Regina added with a shrug, “as an Omega, fear is just about the best I could have hoped for.”  
  
Emma watched as she glanced at Snow’s sleeping figure with a look of half-hearted malice, as if Regina couldn’t quite summon the hate that had once fueled her. Her words, when she spoke, sounded tired.  
  
“There’s a reason that people still looked to your mother as their leader, even when she was a flea bitten bandit in the woods.”  
  
Emma watched her mother sleeping, a strange tangle of emotions swirling in her chest. They had lost so much to Regina, Emma’s childhood perhaps most of all, but their family had not been the only one to suffer. In a world that told Regina she had to no right to love, no right to power, no right even to choose...  
  
Emma felt a great, crushing sadness for all their sakes and stared into the embers.  
  
“So, to say that you and I are compatible…”  
  
Emma’s head jerked up at once. This part she had been deeply curious about, though the apprehension she felt was almost as powerful as the interest.    
  
“If lore is to be trusted,” Regina said tentatively, “it means we are nearly a perfect match.”  
  
Emma opened her mouth, let out a sort of empty sound, then closed it again.  
  
“As you may have guessed, compatible individuals drive one another insane until they,” Regina gestured vaguely, “pair off.”     
  
Absently Emma searched her gut for any trace of deceit, any hint of untruth, but her lie detector remained completely silent in the wake of such an impossible statement.  
  
“They are driven to be together…” Regina continued, sounding strained and looking at a point somewhere in the distance. Emma wondered if the patches of pink she saw rising in Regina’s cheeks were her imagination. “...and compelled on a very deep level to act as a team, regardless of outside circumstance or even personal differences.”  
  
There was a definite thickness to the air now. Emma could smell suppressed want beginning to roll off both of them in waves, making the air sweet and heady, and she was increasingly grateful that everyone else was asleep. Not only because she was not presently being mocked or hit on, but because since they’d been left alone Regina had showed her first signs of feeling something other than rage.  
  
There was a distinct scent of arousal coming off Regina now, and though it was raw and sharp and laced with fear, it was there. Emma hadn’t been imagining it on the ship and she wasn’t imagining it now.  
  
“The level of sick you were,” Regina said softly, looking at Emma for the first time, “indicates that our connection is so strong that denying it caused your body, on some level, to turn on itself.”  
  
Emma eyed the still-dark shade of Regina’s unpainted lips, watched the quivering firelight illuminate the depth of her scar and the shape of her eyelashes, and drew a slow breath. Knowing the attraction, as uncontrollable and as maddening as it was, was not entirely one-sided was making Emma’s heart beat faster.  
  
The link between them, when Regina was open and honest like this, exposing bits of herself to Emma like she almost couldn’t help it, felt good on a level that Emma would have been hard-pressed to explain. It was if she'd been waiting her whole life just to get to know her, to wrap herself up in Regina's voice.  
  
“Is that... rare?” Emma asked. Some distant part of her mind, the ten percent of it that wasn’t currently wrapped up in Regina’s every breath, was imagining a world going constantly insane.    
  
“Very,” Regina replied. “Omegas are rare on our own, so compatibility on that level is even rarer still.” Something complex moved quickly across Regina’s face as she said, “I imagine your parents didn’t tell you any of this because they were afraid you might take it at face value and decide that I am, in fact, a good match.”     
  
There was a heavy pause, in which Emma wondered if it was possible for a great match to go only one way. The embers before them were fading, but Emma couldn’t bring herself to stoke the fire.  
  
“You didn’t get sick,” she pointed out. “You didn’t need any potion.” Some of the comfortable kinship she had started to feel was transitioning rapidly into nerves. To hear that Regina was not experiencing the same type of connection would taste strangely like rejection.  
  
Emma was in the process setting her jaw and straightening her shoulders, bracing herself for the cold shoulder, when Regina fixed her with a completely unexpected, utterly anguished stare.  
  
“I have a little practice,” Regina whispered. Her voice sounded positively shattered. “You are not my first great match.”  
  
Regina’s eyes, as angry as they were devastated, told Emma exactly who she meant.  
  
The long-dead stable boy.  
  
“Oh, Regina.” Emma reached out for her, then drew her hand back just as quickly, remembering Regina’s threat. Emma shifted uncomfortably, unable to offer physical comfort but unsure what to say. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“It's hardly your fault,” Regina said briskly, wiping at her eyes, “given that you weren't even born yet.”  
  
“Yeah, but… God, I can't imagine what that would feel like.” It had only been a matter of days that they'd been together in Neverland, mere hours that they'd really been on the same side, and already the thought of losing that seemed unbearable.  
  
She could only imagine how powerful the connection would feel if they were in love.  
  
Regina inhaled, looking so piercingly into Emma's eyes that it felt as though she were being examined from the inside out, and said, “It feels like having your soul ripped apart.”  
  
Emma had just opened her mouth, chest aching, when Regina held up a finger for silence.  
  
An eerie, unnatural sound was coming from beyond the trees.  
  
Both women jumped to their feet, listening to the voices that radiated impossibly from every direction, a spine-tingling sound bursting from the otherwise still jungle and raising the hairs on the back of their necks.  
  
Children, somewhere, were crying.    
  
Emma drew Neal’s sword and Regina raised a hand, fire flickering to life in her palm. They exchanged a meaningful look, then stepped quietly towards the trees.  
  
“Guys,” Emma hissed at Hook and her sleeping parents, “wake up!”  
  
No one stirred, not even when they walked right past them and Emma kicked Hook’s shoulder. A few paces outside of camp the crying was deafening. Emma and Regina found themselves back to back, turning in place warily, weapons drawn and hearts beating fast.  
  
“Can you hear that too?” a boy asked from a tree beside them.  
  
He was dressed in green and watched almost boredly as Emma pointed her sword as his chest. Regina pulled back her flaming hand, as if to strike.  
  
“Only the mother of a Lost Boy can hear that crying,” he said, twirling his fingers. He wrapped them seemingly around nothing, gave the night an invisible tug, and the forest around them stuttered into silence. “You’re Henry’s mothers, right?”  
  
“Who are you?” Emma growled, already guessing the answer.  
  
“Oh, did I forget to introduce myself?” He smiled. “I’m Peter. Peter Pan.”  
  
Emma lunged forward, pinning him to the tree with her sword against his throat. Regina’s magical flame reflected brightly in his dark eyes as she held it close to his cheek.  
  
“Where’s Henry?” Regina snarled, low and dangerous. Her expression was murderous.  
  
“You’ve got fire,” Pan laughed, looking rather pleased at the both of them. “I like fire.”  
  
Emma scowled and pressed the blade forward, harder against his skin. Pan was not a child, she reminded herself, he was a monster. “Where’s my son?”  
  
Pan smiled, slick and sharp all at once. “Henry’s still alive, if that’s what you’re worried about.”  
  
“Why the hell did you take him?” Emma demanded.  
  
“He’s a very special boy, Emma.”  
  
“Believe me,” Regina hissed, her body close at Emma’s side, “we’re his mothers. We know.”  
  
“I came here,” Pan murmured, his gaze flitting back and forth between the two livid women, “to see who I was up against. The Savior and the Queen…” He smiled hungrily at the both of them. “I have to say, I’m not disappointed.”  
  
“We’re not interested in your opinion, or in playing your games.” Regina’s hands trembled with scarcely suppressed rage as she gripped Pan’s chin and drew the flame close until it nearly licked the edge of his jaw.  
  
“Pity, that you don’t like games.” Pan said softly, craning away. “Because I’ve got a game that will help you find him.” He licked his lips and sing songed, “I’ll give you a map.”  
  
Regina drew back and the fire was reflected, blazing, in her eyes. Her lip twitched and twisted, nearly a smile as she contemplated what Emma knew to be a slow and painful death for Pan.  
  
Instinctively, Emma put a steadying hand on Regina’s wrist, realizing too late what she had done.  
  
The sorceress turned her rage onto Emma instantly, the flame flaring up brighter and hotter for several heartbeats as Regina glared at her. Then Emma withdrew her hand and stepped rapidly back, sword raised as Regina spun to wrap a hand around Pan’s throat.  
  
Pan smiled, languid and cat-like, looking tauntingly between them. “Not exactly the unified parental front, are we?”  
  
Regina hissed, pushing the flame still closer towards him and digging her nails into his skin.  
  
“You have a map?” Emma prompted, quickly. She didn’t think she would be able to stop Regina if she put her mind to brutalizing the fairytale boy. In the very least, they needed to find Henry first.  
  
Pan made to reach inside his shirt pocket, and Emma felt a small wave of relief as Regina released him so that he could. He straightened up and shook out a folded piece of paper, ghostly white in the dappled moonlight.  
  
“A map that will lead you straight to your son,” Pan said, holding it out to them. “I may not be the most well-behaved boy on the island, but I always keep my promises. The path to finding Henry _is_ on this parchment.”  
  
Emma lowered her sword, and Regina let the flame in her hand die as she snatched up the folded paper.  
  
“Why are you giving this to us?” Emma whispered as Regina rapidly unfolded it.  
  
“See it’s not about finding Henry, it’s about _how_ you find him. And, moms,” he said with a sarcastic little smile, “you’re the only ones who can.”  
  
Emma leaned over Regina’s shoulder to watch as she smoothed the parchment out, then matched her scowl. “It’s blank.”  
  
“You’ll only be able to read that map,” Pan said, “when you both stop denying who you really are. Which, if the little display I just witnessed is any indication…”  
  
Emma exchanged a nervous look with Regina, then let her eyes sweep back over the empty map. Only a black outline was etched into the page, marking the space where an island should have been.  
  
“...will be never,” Pan finished.  
  
When Emma snapped her head up, angry words died on her lips. Perplexed, both she and Regina looked around.  
  
Pan had vanished, leaving the two women alone in the jungle once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta’d by the wonderful [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/), my grammatical hero. <3  
> (If you like my fic, you might also enjoy my [fic tumblr](http://nookiepoweredfic.tumblr.com) and my [original fiction](http://www.dreasilvertooth.com).)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every single comment you guys leave makes me smile. Thank you for all the motivation, I hope y’all continue to enjoy the ride. 
> 
> Content warning: mild violence and injury.

“If Pan said there’s a map on this parchment,” Hook insisted, “then there is.”  
  
Emma and Regina sat facing one another on a fallen log, Emma balanced cross-legged and Regina with her knees folded neatly to one side. Each grasped their side of Pan’s parchment with careful fingertips while Hook, Snow, and Charming sat nearby, hovering.  
  
The blank map shimmered faintly in the morning light, pulsing almost imperceptibly with the same magic as the rest of Pan’s island. Regina, who was alternating between glowering fiercely down at the parchment and absently smoothing it out, deepened her scowl.  
  
“Well, it’s certainly not making itself known,” she said.  
  
“Maybe you have to try it out loud,” Snow suggested, helpfully.  
  
Emma and Regina exchanged an uncomfortable look.  
  
They’d spent a better part of the night thinking over every personal piece of information they could muster, parchment tight in hand, but neither had felt compelled to start speaking aloud. Now Emma wished that they had. As awkward as that would have been, she felt ten times safer in the dark with Regina than in the daylight with an audience.  
  
“Okay.” Emma shifted self-consciously in place, hyper aware of the many eyes on them. “I’m...Emma Swan.”  
  
“Regina Mills,” the other woman told the map, crisply.  
  
After a beat Snow dropped her head into her hands. Charming slowly raised an eyebrow. Hook sighed.  
  
“Ladies,” the pirate said, bemused, “you may have to offer up more than just your names to unlock a magical artifact.”  
  
“Pan said,” Snow reminded them for the umpteenth time, “that once you both accept who you are, the map will reveal Henry’s location.”  
  
“Oh, is that all?” Regina said, looking as frustrated as Emma felt. There was a vein starting to stand out on her forehead. “If we just accept ourselves for the unique little flowers we are, then this map will be on our side? For those of us _not_ located at the center of the universe, narcissistic introspection is not quite so easy.”  
  
“Hey, I’m not the egomaniac who created a whole town just so she could play mayor-”  
  
“Ladies.” Charming lifted his hands in an attempt at calming diplomacy. He took a deep breath and said, reasonably, “Let’s start simple. Just, tell the map where you’re from and what you do.”  
  
“I believe in your world it’s called _career_ ,” Hook contributed. The accompanying finger quotes were slightly comical when half of them were illustrated by a bobbing hook.  
  
“First date crap,” Emma sighed. Then, at Regina’s supercilious look, added, “I had to fake about a billion first dates as a bailbondsperson.”  
  
Regina shook her head, wearily. “Save it for the map, Miss Swan.”  
  
Emma rolled her eyes, then stared down at the square, worn-looking page. She rubbed her thumbs over the thick edges, trying to focus on the magic she could feel rippling underneath.  
  
“I used to live in Boston and I was a bailbondsperson. I am now the sheriff of Storybrooke.” Emma thought of her other job, her most important job, and said, “I’m also Henry’s mother.” She cast a quick, apologetic look at Regina and corrected, “One of Henry’s mothers.”  
  
“I am Henry’s other mother,” Regina said, with only some of the usual edge. She too was staring into the parchment with a great deal of concentration. “I was born in the Enchanted Forest to the miller’s daughter. I ruled the kingdom,” her lips twitched downwards, eyes darting fleetingly towards Snow and Charming, “briefly. I am now the mayor of Storybrooke.”  
  
Though Emma could feel the people around them holding their breath, she knew immediately that it was a flop. The faint magical hum of the parchment remained unchanged, its surface blank as ever. Emma thought it looked impressively smug for an object without voice or expression.  
  
“This is useless,” Regina said tersely. “Every second we spend looking at this map is another second we’re not looking for my son.”  
  
“Don’t you think,” Snow tried encouragingly, as Regina glared down at the parchment so fiercely it might have caught fire, “that maybe you’re both leaving some things out?”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Regina shifted her glare onto Snow. “Would you like to explain heroes and villains to the inanimate object?”  
  
“We should try everything,” Charming insisted. His heavy arm around Snow’s shoulders seemed to sooth her out of rising to the challenge. “Anything you two can think of. What do we have to lose?”  
  
“Okay,” Emma said again, shifting in place and squaring her shoulders as they looked to her expectantly. “I am the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, which...” She squirmed uncomfortably. “Apparently makes me the product of true love.  
  
Snow beamed encouragingly, gesturing for her to keep going. Emma focused hard on the times that Storybrooke, that Henry, had needed her most. She envisioned her lips touching his forehead, causing a wave of energy so light and bright it almost hurt when it hit her in the chest.  
  
“I am the Savior,” she said, very softly.  
  
“And I,” Regina followed in that low dark drawl that traced a shiver up Emma’s spine, “am the Evil Queen.” Emma opened her eyes to watch Regina raise a disdainful eyebrow and add, looking a little morose, “Enemy of Snow White and Prince Charming and the would-be destroyer of true love and the Savior.”  
  
Beneath them, something in the invisible fabric of the island’s magic rippled fleetingly.  
  
“It’s working,” Emma whispered, tightening her grip on the map excitedly. “We’re getting closer.”  
  
“Keep going!” Snow said.  
  
“I…” Emma started, unsure of what else to say. Her mind finally settled on a newfound element of her identity, one she wasn’t quite sold on. “I am an Alpha,” she announced, wishing desperately that she felt like the brave archetype she was supposed to be.  
  
After a beat she looked expectantly up at a silent Regina, whose expression was pinched.  
  
Something painful appeared to be at work behind the usual mask of indifference, and several tight seconds ticked past in silence. Regina appeared to be fighting an internal battle, reflected only in the tension around her eyes and the twitching of her lips.  
  
“I…” she started, frowning.  
  
Without warning she leapt to her feet and snatched the map from Emma’s hands, stalking away from the others and moving her fingers rapidly as four different voices rose up in protest.  
  
“Regina, I thought we agreed that your explosive brand of magic was dangerous-”  
  
“-you can’t cheat at Pan’s games, luv, better men than you have tried-”  
  
“-we’re supposed to be a team-”  
  
By the time Emma was on her feet, Regina’s magic was already interweaving with Pan’s, her fingers moving rapidly in a whirl of colors and light scarcely visible to the naked eye. When the page flared momentarily bright, Regina pulled back looking victorious.  
  
“There. A locator spell,” Regina said coolly, smirking at the Charmings’ horrified faces. “We don’t need to play by Pan’s rules. He’s not the only powerful magical being on this island.”  
  
The map lifted like a beacon into the air and slowly drifted towards the darkest part of the treeline. The dread on Hook’s face did very little to steel Emma’s resolve.  
  
“The dark jungle,” the pirate groaned. “The most dangerous place in Neverland.”  
  
“Naturally,” Charming said.  
  
“Well, Emma,” Regina spoke suddenly from very close beside her. Emma tensed from head to toe at the proximity. They were so close she could smell her, could almost feel Regina’s heart beating rabbit-fast in time with her own. Her voice was unexpectedly raspy and low. “You said you wanted to be the leader.”  
  
Emma turned to find dark eyes fixed on hers, only inches away. The were alive with challenge, with fury, with something deadly and dark and old; and Emma wondered if Regina’s eyes had always been this bewitching, if her voice had always felt this dangerous.  
  
“Lead,” Regina whispered in a hot breath against her cheek.  
  
Emma could no more deny her than she could stop breathing.  
 

* * *

  

“Is this supposed to scare us?” Regina scoffed at Peter Pan, looking superior even in the midst of an ambush. “A dozen children playing with sticks?”  
  
The circle of Lost Boys seemed to ripple and shift around them in the darkness, clutching bows, staffs, and torches haloed in yellow light. An older boy, just on the brink of adolescence with a gaunt, angular face, stepped forward to leer down at Regina.  
  
“Better to remain a child forever,” he sneered, the venom in his voice making his expression ugly, “than grow up to be a disappointing Omega.”  
  
Regina’s eyes were alight with all the fires of hell when she launched a fireball straight at his chest, but Emma still beat her to it. She had all but forgotten her sword, forgotten her fear, forgotten everything except the way he looked at her son’s other mother like she was less.  
  
Regina’s fireball singed her arm in passing, sliced white hot along her left side, as she tackled the boy into the underbrush.  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Emma snarled, filled with a sudden rage more instantaneous and unexpectedly vicious than anything she could remember feeling. It felt like seeing the Daily Mirror headlined _Ex-Jailbird_ with her picture, felt like a runner saying, _what would you know about family, anyway_ , it felt like Regina’s honor was hers to defend and lashing out was pure instinct.  
  
Her hands were around the Lost Boy’s neck, squeezing, before she had even registered the motion. His lips tipped up a sick mockery of a smile as his eyes rolled, as his face tinged blue, and Emma was reminded in an instant that Lost Boys did not fear death.  
  
It was no punishment next to eternity.  
  
Emma felt hands tugging at her shoulders as if from a great distance, as if remembering it in a dream, and it was with a dim awareness that she registered the chaos breaking out around her. Arrows whizzed past and swords cut the air, and through it all Pan’s voice, maddeningly smug, rung in Emma’s ears. Beneath her, she watched as something in the far recesses of the boy’s eyes edged towards something hopeless and familiar.  
  
“Emma,” Regina snapped from several feet away, and it was incredible how fast that voice brought her to attention, how quick it cut through her haze. “That’s enough.”  
  
Her hands went slack, and the boy spluttered on his first breath as Snow continued half-heartedly tugging on Emma’s shoulder as though she hadn’t quite registered she had stopped, eyes locked on Regina in a disbelieving stare. Emma became suddenly aware of how loud and fast her heart was beating, of how the hairs on the back of her neck were completely on end and her skin was cold with sweat.  
  
Then, in a flash, they were both pulled back into the fray.  
  
Hook’s warnings of deadly dreamshade echoed in Emma’s head as the gaunt boy scrambled to his feet. Emma drew her sword and only narrowly missed a swift arrow breezing past her. Snow fired her bow with a heavy twang several times in short succession, pinning boys’ clothing to tree-trunks, while Charming and Hook fought off a small army with surprising coordination. Regina let an unnatural light bloom to life in her palms, spindling off and electrocuting several boys until they twitched grotesquely on the ground.  
  
Then Pan whistled, and all at once boys scattered like shadows beneath the sun.  
  
“Remember what I told you,” Pan drawled, perched above them wearing Henry’s favorite scarf and the same lazy smile. “The map will show you where Henry is, only when you stop denying who you really are.” He held out a chiding finger, wagging it back and forth. “No more cheating, girls. It’s bad form.”  
  
Regina made a sharp, low sound in the back of her throat very near a growl, her eyes never leaving Pan. There was still a halo of purple in her irises, violent magic swimming at the edge of her gaze; and even through the racing of her own heart Emma found time to wonder how anyone could look at Regina and see anything other than an unstoppable force of nature, how anyone could wish her to be less.  
  
“I’ll be sure to send Henry your regards,” Peter Pan said, and Emma desperately wanted to rip her son’s precious scarf from around his neck, but before they had regrouped the whooping of young voices carried Pan off into the trees.  
  
All at once Emma became aware of how hard she was shaking, that her brow was dripping sweat, and that she was struggling to breathe.  
  
Then without warning Regina’s gloved hands were touching her, rearranging her to examine the underside of her left arm, and Emma felt all the air rush out of her at the sight of a severe burn that she couldn’t feel. She scarcely had time to register that her own skin looked leathery and blistered, bloodless but still horribly red, before Snow was cupping her cheeks and turning her face away.  
  
“No, don’t look.” Snow and Charming crowded in around her, looking worried and pale. “Look at us.”  
  
“Aye,” Hook chimed in, hovering somewhere beyond her parent’s stricken faces, “the witch is more than equal to the job. She’ll set you right, Swan.”  
  
“I have a name, you know,” Regina said softly, as if what they were calling her was the least of her worries. Emma had the vague impression of bright light flaring up and Regina’s bottom lip held tight between her teeth, concentration etched into her features.  
  
Then a wave of pain hit Emma full-force and she dropped her sword with a clatter. A strange creeping sensation, as if the outer layers of her skin were rapidly regrowing beneath Regina’s fingertips, moved up her arm, bringing the pain of new nerves with it. It took Charming’s steadying hands on her shoulders to stop her from tipping over.  
  
“That was a very foolish thing to do, Miss Swan,” Regina chided, almost fondly.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Emma managed through gritted teeth. “No one ever congratulated the Charming line on our brains.”  
  
“True. Though I don’t remember your parents ever diving in front of a fireball.”  
  
The pain slowly eased and Emma forced herself to breathe, deep and slow. Regina turned Emma’s arm in place, glided her gloved fingertips over the skin, and then stepped back looking satisfied. “That’ll do.”  
  
“Thank you, Regina,” Snow said solemnly. Then suddenly she was rounding on Emma, looking uncharacteristically severe. “Emma, why were you hurting that boy?”  
  
“Why do you think?” Emma groaned, feeling rapidly along the underside of her arm. It was perfectly smooth to the touch. She breathed a deep sigh of relief. “The same reason we were all fighting them. They have Henry.”  
  
“I didn’t ask why you were _fighting_ him, I asked why you were _hurting_ him.” Snow glared, face going pink as she rose to her full height. “You did it because he insulted Regina.”  
  
Emma turned away, picking her sword up from where she’d dropped it and doing her best not to rise to the occasion. Her head was still pounding, she felt weak and pale. “So what if I did?”  
  
“Emma,” Snow cried, “that’s not how we do things!”  
  
“What, fighting back? That’s reserved for, what, villains? Lost Boys?” Emma slid her sword back into the sheath with a satisfying sort of sound. “I am practically a Lost Boy, I’m practically...”  
  
Emma ignored her mother’s horrified expression. On this island she didn’t feel like a hero, a savior, or an Alpha. She just felt like what she’d always been.  
  
“...an orphan,” Emma finished, unsteadily.  
  
It was terrible, to watch the fight drain of her mother entirely. She let out a muted sort of sob and Hook clapped Charming on the arm, pulling him away to speak softly with him and give the women some privacy.  
  
“The map,” came a soft, low voice. Emma startled a little at Regina’s nearness, then followed her gaze to Emma’s bag where a faint white glow was emanating.  
  
Realization dawned and she pulled out the map between them. Regina grasped the opposite end and looked at Emma expectantly.  
  
“I’m an orphan,” Emma repeated, her whole heart aching with the truth of it.  
  
“And I’m a monster,” Regina said, unflinchingly. Beneath them the map flared white-hot-bright and Emma remembered the lightning leaving Regina’s fingertips, the Lost Boys screaming, and she knew from the self-loathing in the other woman’s eyes that she was thinking about it too.  
  
For a long moment they held eye contact, unable or unwilling to look down, but when they finally did it was to find what Emma already knew. The bright light had faded. The map was still resolutely blank.  
  
Pan’s face swam in her mind’s eye, replaced painfully by Henry’s terrified one, and to Emma’s horror she began to cry.  
  
Emma pressed her knuckles to her eyes and swore. She cursed Pan and his island and herself, because Snow who was practically a stranger was still crying softly behind her, but it sounded just like Mary Margaret, like the roommate that she had loved. Emma cursed because, for all the damage that she’d done, they were still no closer to Henry.  
  
“I don’t know what came over me, I just…” Emma pressed her palms angrily into her eyes, trying and failing to suppress a muffled sob. “I was so angry... I shouldn’t have… He was just a kid.”  
  
Snow’s tearful breathing stuttered abruptly to a halt.  
  
Emma looked up to see that Regina had dropped her side of the map and opened her arms. There was something like fear at the edge of her eyes, something stiff in her posture, but she wore a no-nonsense, brisk sort of expression when she ordered Emma, “Come here.”  
  
After a very confused pause, Emma shuffled forward. It was only after Regina’s arms were closing around her that she realized she had never seen Regina hug anyone except for Henry.  
  
She smelled like magic and campfires and wilderness. She smelled like the same faint, faded perfume Emma knew from those rare, beautiful times that Henry had hugged both his mothers in short succession and brought a whisper of Regina with him. Emma’s heart stuttered helplessly in her chest when Regina held her, her arms pinned at her side, the map hanging limply from one fist.  
  
Regina stroked tentatively down her back as she said, “I’m afraid it is possible that you are feeling some of my emotions, especially in times of great anger.”  
  
Her throat was inches away, dark hair tickling Emma’s nose, and even through her shock Emma recognized this as the most contact they’d ever had; except for the times they’d been spitting mad and chest to chest, so close they could have kissed.  
  
“Shared emotions are rumored to be a side-effect of bonding,” Regina said, her voice cracking slightly. Emma could smell the sharp tang of fear, faint but distinct on her skin.  
  
“I hate your universe,” Emma said into Regina’s hair petulantly. The body against her rumbled with a low, raspy laugh.  
  
“Me too, dear.”  
  
Then Regina spoke in her softest voice, the one Emma recognized as usually reserved for Henry.  
  
“Your parents love you. My son loves you. He loves you so much,” she added with a little pat to Emma’s shoulder blades, “it makes me want to rip your beating heart out.”  
  
Emma, too surprised to cry any longer, pulled back to meet Regina’s eyes. They revealed very little, as if the shutters between her mind and her eyes had been pulled closed, but there was a soft quality there that Emma had never seen. It felt like glimpsing something rare, something precious.  
  
“Thanks,” she whispered, almost reverently.  
  
Emma peeked past Regina to see Snow looking utterly shellshocked, perfectly silent where she stood slouched against a tree. With a deep breath she remembered late night cocoa with cinnamon on it, how Mary Margaret had felt like so much more than her roommate, and how Snow still tried at every opportunity to be there for her.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Emma said, looking at her mother from the arms of her mortal enemy. “I shouldn’t have said that.”  
  
To her surprise, Snow shook her head. “It’s all right. It’s the truth.”  
  
Regina hummed, letting her hands drop from Emma, and retreated back to a respectable distance.  
  
“Thanks again,” Emma muttered awkwardly, looking down.  
  
“I meant it.” Regina straightened out her blazer, eyes on the ground and voice lowering to a throatier octave as she said, “Especially the part about ripping out your beating heart.”  
  
Emma surprised herself with a laugh, free and easy and utterly unafraid. “You really need to diversify your threats. The heart thing? Getting pretty old.”  
  
“The impudence of your line is astounding.”  
  
Emma shrugged. “It’s probably hereditary.”  
  
Regina looked away politely while Emma fumbled with the flask at her hip. A quick sip helped dull the impossible heat that had started coursing through her at the contact. Not an inch of skin had touched, Regina's long sleeves and leather gloves saw to that, but she had still felt the warmth of Regina’s body through the fabric, the hypnotic rhythm of her breathing.  
  
“I’ll wait with the pirate and the false prince,” Regina said, waving in the direction the boys had gone.  
  
She’d already turned and started down the path when Emma cleared her throat loudly.  
  
“For the record,” she said suddenly as the sentiment filled her, “I don’t think you’re a monster.”  
  
Emma thought of Graham collapsing, thought of her own childhood lost, thought of Henry in a cursed sleep; but then she thought of the other woman crouched over a diamond in the mines with tears streaking down her cheeks, ready to die as Regina.  
  
“Not anymore,” Emma said firmly.  
  
In the background, a quiet intake of breath sounded suspiciously like the noise Mary Margaret used to make when Emma let a genuine feeling slip, back when she thought fairytales were just the stuff of stories.  
  
Regina opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again. For a moment she looked stricken and Emma thought she had done something wrong.  
  
Then Regina smiled, slow and tremulous, one hand hovering delicately over her own stomach, and Emma could think of nothing but how surprisingly small Regina had felt against her and how deep that sadness in Regina’s eyes went. How it hurt, suddenly, to look at someone so tragic; the indomitable, heart-stoppingly brave hero of her own story but the twisted villain in everyone else’s.  
  
Then Regina turned away, and Snow was looking between her retreating form and Emma’s lingering stare with something like dawning comprehension. She grasped her daughter by the hands, her tear-stained face bright and perceptive, and asked both more quickly and more kindly than Emma would have expected:  
  
“How long have you been in love with Regina?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mad props to my killer beta [semperjuris](http://semperjuris.tumblr.com/), who helped me figure out what the frick frack I was trying to do with this chapter and made it infinitely better with suggestions and cheerleading. <3 Many thanks also to [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/) who did the final walkthrough of my usual grammatical hell. You two rock.
> 
> (If you like my fic, you might also enjoy my [fic tumblr](http://www.nookiepoweredfic.tumblr.com) or my [original fiction](http://www.dreasilvertooth.com).)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry this chapter took so long!! I had a lot of ground to cover in one chapter and wanted to do it justice. Thank you for sticking with me and for all the wonderful comments. <33 I love you guys. 
> 
> Content warning: discussion of dubious consent, as part of the A/B/O theme.

Snow’s hazel eyes were darker, rounder, and altogether more innocent than Emma’s had ever been; but there were moments, when the light fell into them just so, that Emma could almost see her own green eyes looking back at her. This was one of those moments, with sunlight trickling down from the treetops into her mother’s wide eyes.  
  
“Emma,” Snow repeated slowly, the kind of fear in her voice that hung in the air, thick and stifling like rain on a hot day, “how long have you been in love with Regina?”  
  
Emma visibly flinched at the word. It felt like _safety_ and _home_ , but also like _loss_ and _rejection_. It reminded her of a heartbroken little girl who would cry under the covers at night, trembling with how fiercely she wanted to be loved, then spent her every waking moment shoving willing hearts far, far away.  
  
“What?” Emma managed, the heat rising in her face.  
  
“I saw it,” Snow quavered. “In your eyes, just then… You love her.”  
  
There was shock and awe and a terrible finality echoed in her mother’s too-similar gaze. The tension in her shoulders and spine felt contagious, so Emma did what she always did when things became too real, too fast.  
  
She ran.  
  
The sun was setting by the time she’d tired of wandering blindly in the growing darkness, kicking at offending trees and growling at empty shadows, willing Neverland to give her a fight and hating it for coming up short. The last lines of gold were vanishing from the horizon when she stalked back towards the camp she knew would be set up by now, still clutching that stupid, obnoxiously blank map in one fist and following the indescribable pull of magic that she knew as Regina’s.  
  
Emma had known, even as she tore away from the group, that she’d never be able to lose them. Pan’s island wasn’t big enough for her to lose that tugging in her bones, drawing her back to where _she_ was, more captivating and terrifying in the flesh than any abstract concept of love.  
  
Hushed voices could be heard just outside the glow of the fire, but so deep was Emma in thought about what Regina called a _bond_ , at the concept of sharing pain and joy and anger with one of the most feared beings in all the realms, that she nearly walked right into them.  
  
Snow and Charming were whispering rapidly, drawn close together in the dark. They smelled like agitation, like stress, and it was just strong enough to mask Emma’s own scent from them as she withdrew quickly, stepping back into the treeline.  
  
“-not to mention spent the better part her adult life plotting to kill me!” Snow was whispering, almost pleadingly, to her husband. “She took Emma from us. They should not be compatible, they should not be… falling in love!”  
  
“I know. I know.” Her father’s voice was low, measured, and soothing. Emma could see him holding his wife’s shoulders to steady her. Their silhouettes were illuminated by a flickering orange from the fire. “You know I will always support you, however you feel. But I think it’s important that we remember how we got together.”  
  
“Charming,” Snow said warningly, a faint growl in her voice.  
  
“And that when true love hits,” he continued, placing a large hand over his small Alpha’s heart, “it is often unexpected, unwelcome, and hopelessly strong.” He leaned in close to her, touched their foreheads together, and exhaled. For a moment they were still, and Emma had the distinct impression that they were breathing one another in. “I think we need to remember that, no matter how implausible it appears from the outside, true love has the power to change people for the better.”  
  
Nose to nose with him, Snow glared. “I hate it when you use our own story against me.”  
  
He smiled, scooping her hand up and kissing it. “Works every time.”  
  
“She’s our little girl,” she protested.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“This could tear the family apart,” she warned.  
  
“We almost tore two kingdoms apart,” Charming pointed out.  
  
Snow opened her mouth, then slumped forward to rest her cheek on his chest. He stroked her hair for several quiet moments, seemingly holding her while the righteous anger seeped away. It felt like something they had done many times before. When she asked, “What do you think we should do?” it was in a much softer voice.  
  
He kissed the top of her head. “I think we should support Emma, unconditionally. And I think the best way to do that right now is by leaving them alone.”  
  
Emma watched them break apart and, deciding that this was as good a time as any to make an appearance, she shuffled loudly into the open.  
  
“Hey,” she said, trying not to look as though she had been eavesdropping. “I needed some air.”  
  
There was a tense moment, in which Emma felt small but defiant under their scrutiny, before her mother’s face broke into a weak smile.  
  
“Emma.” Snow reached out, slung a careful arm around her daughter’s shoulders, and began to lead her back to camp. “Come on, your skin is freezing. Let’s sit by the fire.”  
  
Charming dropped his coat over her shoulders and smiled in that _I got your back, kiddo_ way. Emma swelled with gratitude and made silent plans to give him all the best shifts and biggest bear claws at the Sheriff’s station for at least a month, assuming they made it back alive.  
  
Regina was waiting by the fire, like Emma knew she would be, sitting across from Hook in awkward silence. Her blue blazer was draped over her arms, padded at the shoulders like pauldrons, and she had painted her lips a dangerous, don’t-touch-me shade of red. Her dark eyes drifted over the new arrivals only briefly, and she chose not to comment when Emma emerged from the trees smelling like stress and lingering, hopeless arousal at the sight of the woman she really wished she could stop staring at.  
  
Regina simply shifted aside wordlessly, making room on the log she occupied, and Emma slid in beside her without thinking, placed the map between them, and held out her cold hands towards the fire.  
  
When Emma inhaled she could smell her, Regina’s sweat, the campfire smoke scent of her hair, and an indescribable, permeating something that was almost certainly her magic, and Emma realized what her parents must have been doing when they stood face to face. Simply being near Regina was unbelievably soothing. It felt like the taut, invisible string that had connected them across the island had finally slackened, the other woman’s scent wafting over her like a calming draft.  
  
She chanced a little glance over and thought that, if Regina hadn’t been such a practiced actress, she might have betrayed more than the slightly unfocused expression she wore.  
  
“Have a pleasant stroll, Miss Swan?” she asked, her voice oddly low. In spite of what Emma was sure were her best efforts, Regina looked a little like a cat about to start purring.  
  
“Sure,” Emma hummed, her eyes shut and breathing deep. “Why not?”  
  
“Perhaps take someone with you next time.” Emma opened one eye and glanced over at Regina who added, “I’d hate to explain to my son that his other mother got swallowed up by the dark forest because she’s antisocial.”  
  
The suggestion wasn’t nearly as caustic as it could have been. In fact, beneath the carefully curated nonchalance, it sounded almost as if Regina had just told her to be careful.  
  
In spite of everything, Emma smiled.  
 

* * *

   
Operation Henry continued the next day, though the map remained unmoved.  
  
Emma missed the sun on her face, warm and unobscured by the dim that hung over Pan’s island like a blanket. She missed real food, not the rehydrated grains they’d brought from the ship or the meals conjured from Regina's hand. Matter could neither be created nor destroyed, could not be summoned between realms, so she was simply reshaping ingredients already found on the island and Emma was damn sick of berries and fish.  
  
Two nights ago they had touched down on Neverland’s unnaturally silent, impossibly lush green shores. It had been two days more since she’d seen her son’s face.  
  
She missed Henry, his smile crooked like hers but his eyebrow arched like Regina’s. She missed his wit and his warmth and his indomitable faith because, without him, she had started to feel less like a hero and more like a soul wandering aimlessly through the jungle, more and more lost by the hour.  
  
Regina did not comfort Emma again after their one and only embrace. To the contrary, she snapped at Emma in the morning light, almost back to Storybrooke levels, as if daring the rest of the party to get any ideas about where they stood. But even that couldn’t stop Snow and Charming from casting them furtive looks and whispering maddeningly among themselves when they thought no one was listening.  
  
Emma, for her part, was too busy ignoring the voices in her head which were aching to process, blocking out the little hum in the back of her mind that noticed the way her stomach flipped when she looked at Regina kept asking if it was… if that was how it felt to be…  
  
But this wasn’t the time, Neverland was not the place, and Emma had the very distinct impression that indulging in whatever feelings their chemical stupor had conjured up would just bite her in the ass. Hell, coming on to Regina, confessing _feelings_ for Regina, would probably make Emma’s top ten list of bad ideas.  
  
Which, for a woman who’d given birth in prison, was saying something.  
  
So Emma shut them up, stomped them viciously down, and focused on finding Henry. Everything else could wait.  
 

* * *

  
They captured a Lost Boy and Regina did what Snow couldn’t, what Emma wouldn’t, and ripped out his beating heart.  
  
It was magic at its darkest when Regina moved the boy across the island like a puppeteer, lips twitching towards a frown and her fingers dancing through the air. One look at the magic swirling in Regina’s eyes and Emma’s skin was crawling, her hand resting protectively over her own sternum.  
  
But in mere moments she was looking through a mirror into her son’s clever, wonderful face, everything inside her made lighter by the knowledge that he was alive, and Regina’s face was so full of love it looked as though she might burst. Not even Snow could hold onto her disapproval as the three women squeezed in together, smiled at their baby boy, and told him to hang on.  
  
Then the connection ended, Henry’s familiar face was gone, and the joyful moment popped around them like a soap bubble. Regina, all the warmth gone from her eyes, lifted the Lost Boy’s heart and began to squeeze.  
  
“He’s just a kid!” Emma said in a rush, remembering that tragic backstories don’t stop villains from burning the world to the ground. She reached out towards her son’s other mother, beseeching, but made certain not to touch.  
  
“He’s one of Henry’s captors,” Regina hissed, but the fear at the edge of her eyes was familiar to Emma now. She knew it, could feel it reflected in her own shaking hands and racing heart, and recognized a mother's resolve crumbling at the thought that this was someone else's child. “He’ll lead them right back to us if I let him.”  
  
“Please, Regina.” Emma could see something aching and raw in the downward curve of Regina’s parted lips, in the wideness of her eyes, and went for the heart with a magic of her own when she said, “He’s Henry’s age.”  
  
Snow looked at them with a strange sort of knowing when Regina caved, let her shoulders slump and her eyes fall shut, and heaved a great sigh.  
  
“You’re a heartsick fool, Emma Swan, and you’ll go the same way as your parents.”  
  
Regina looked fierce as she whispered one last command into the boy’s heart, but it was with the gentlest of hands that she hid the heart in a gnarled tree, safely wrapped in Snow’s handkerchief, waiting for the boy to come retrieve it.  
 

* * *

   
They met Tinkerbell, and Regina sat with Emma under a velvety black sky, the campfire reflected gold in her eyes. She stared at her fingertips and told Emma how she leapt from her castle balcony a lifetime ago, when magic still tasted dark and unwelcome on her lips and death held more appeal than a heart turned black. Regina confessed, with hands fragile on her stomach and voice hard, that she gave up her second chance at love; and though Emma couldn’t be sure if love was a fairy or a tattooed man, she knew a closed door when she saw one.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Emma said, and she meant it. The fire crackled and Regina looked at her, the way she did sometimes now when they were alone, with something open and hungry in her eyes.  
 

* * *

  
Tink became a reluctant ally and Emma practiced magic for the moment they would face Peter Pan. Regina baited, taunted, and infuriated her into success. It felt like snarling too close beneath an apple tree, throwing punches in a graveyard, and _I will destroy you if it’s the last thing I do._ The same fierce song sung through Emma’s veins, ignited her blood and awakened the best and worst within her, and Tink watched her curiously, almost knowingly.  
  
Snow and Charming protested, said the only magic in Neverland was dark magic. But Emma looked at Regina these days and thought that maybe there was no such thing, that maybe light and dark were like Alpha and Omega, different halves of the same whole, opposite angles on the same shape.  
  
Neal rode a shadow to Neverland, scruffy and familiar, his Beta heart beating fast for her, and Emma couldn’t say she wasn’t happy to see him. She loved him, she’d always love him, but they’d done this dance before and Emma found that she wanted him alive and whole but firmly at arm’s length.  
  
“Let it go, mate,” Hook finally told Neal, who was apparently his kind-of-son because fairytales are so much weirder in real life. “This one’s got her heart set on a meaner animal than you or I.”  
  
“Glad we’ve straightened that out,” Emma snapped, accidentally hitting a shocked Neal in the face with a rebounding palm frond as she charged forward on the trail, all her brainpower caught up in blocking out the pirate’s meaning.  
  
Ahead of them, Regina turned to raise a pointed eyebrow.  
  
Neal let out a drawn out “Ooooh” while Hook clapped him sympathetically on the shoulder. Emma turned in time to see Neal scratching the back of his head, eyeing Regina dubiously. “Well,” he said, giving her a supportive thumbs up, “the Emma I knew always did like a challenge. It’s not Tallahassee, but...I’ve got your back, Em.”  
  
So, she had that going for her.  


* * *

  
In the quiet moments, when they trekked through Pan’s island like an army seven soldiers strong, Emma followed Regina’s gracefully curving back, watched the beads of sweat trickle down the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, and imagined what losing a perfect match would feel like.  
  
Emma envisioned having her soul split down the middle, a thin gossamer cloth torn beyond repair, and the thought was so excruciating she wondered if she’d felt it in her bones years ago.  
  
She remembered protecting Regina even when she was the enemy, inexplicably compelled to save the mayor from falling buildings and the queen from soul-sucking wraiths and angry mobs, and Emma realized with a start that, for all her talk of destroying the Savior, the worst Regina ever came at her with was eternal sleep.  
  
Then Emma wondered if, somehow, they had both known it all along; that the worst fate of all would be to breathe in a world where the other’s heart no longer beat.   
 

* * *

   
The lagoons in Neverland were ink-black and made Emma think of crocodile spines cutting silently through murky water. Her bare toes sank into mud at the bank, the tall grass sharp and uninviting around her ankles, but after three days in Neverland she couldn't stand herself. Every inch of her felt saturated in sweat and stress that she was dying to scrub off, so she had taken Tink’s advice and stripped down at the water’s edge.  
  
The fairy said that Pan wandered into other worlds after twilight and Lost Boys slept, dreaming of the families they’d long forgotten. Emma thought, with a pang, of Henry.  
  
Neal’s old sword reflected a sharp swath of moonlight as she laid it down on top of her clothes. Emma stood for several moments, naked and shivering in a Neverland midnight, just watching the water lap at her calves.  
  
Then she closed her eyes, counted to three, and dove.  
  
Water pressed in around her like a heavy darkness, obscuring her vision and startling her with its icy embrace. Long grass tangled and wound around her legs when she kicked and Emma fought, claustrophobic, to escape the reeds that reached for her like the many long arms of the bank.  
  
She breached near the center of the lagoon where it was colder, deeper, and mercifully empty. Her legs moved freely through water which was otherwise dark and still, and when she looked out over the surface she could see Neverland’s stars reflected back in unfamiliar constellations. She relaxed, drifted lazily up to float and scrub at her hair. A nearly full moon hung heavy in the sky, casting ghostly shadows on the distant shape of what Tinkerbell called Skull Rock.  
  
The water barely moved around her and the darkness was so complete that she felt excellently camouflaged, until something behind her moved.  
  
It flared bright and blinding and dangerously close, and Emma’s heart stuttered in her chest. She sank immediately back into the water, just her head and fists bobbing above the surface, wishing desperately for her sword.  
  
“Oh, shit, _Regina_.” The woman in question floated ten feet away with a fireball ready in her palm, her familiar startled face and less familiar shoulders lit by the flame. “You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were Pan.”  
  
She could tell by a glimpse of exposed collarbone, by arms bare in the moonlight and the way Regina’s cheeks kept their pink glow even after the flame went out, that she was just as naked as Emma. The whole thing would have been hilarious, the Queen bobbing carefully beneath the black water blushing furiously, if the Savior weren’t in the exact same position.  
  
Emma sank a little deeper until the water tickled her nose. Regina moved her hand through the air, leaving behind a trail of bright lights that burned strangely into Emma’s vision. When Emma’s eyes had re-adjusted to the darkness, Regina looked satisfied. “No, we are quite alone. I’d feel his smugness.”  
  
“Well that’s...” Emma was going to say good, but she was about ninety-percent sure being alone and naked with Regina was, in fact, far more terrifying than encountering Peter Pan. She swallowed, trying not to inhale the sharp-sweet scent of raw, startled arousal coming off of them both. “I was just taking a bath.”  
  
“Yes, dear, I can see that.” Regina rolled her eyes, the high angles of her cheeks still colored. “So was I.”  
  
Emma folded her arms over her breasts self-consciously, treading water with her legs. “Snow suggested I come down for a bath and Tink said this place is…” Regina raised an eyebrow slowly. Emma stopped mid-sentence and groaned. “It’s not coincidence that we’re here at the same time, is it?”  
  
“Your mother and the fairy.” Regina laughed, that familiar hard edge returning to her voice. “Naturally. Always sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”  
  
“Their intentions were good.” Emma said, rapidly making peace with her mother and a fairy colluding to set her up with their mortal enemy. Honestly, what even was her life.  
  
“They always are,” Regina huffed. She was looking everywhere but at Emma, as if she could pretend that they weren’t naked in the same lagoon if she just stared hard hard enough in the opposite direction. A crease had formed between her brows. Emma found it irritatingly cute. “Well, I’ll just--”  
  
Regina gestured vaguely to the shore, and “No!” was out of Emma’s mouth before she could stop it. She cleared her throat, face going hot, and quickly added, “I mean, I think we both deserve a little relaxation after the week we’ve had. Probably safer to stick together, anyway.”  
  
At Regina’s sceptical look Emma continued, “What if there’s a crocodile? I definitely remember the old Peter Pan cartoon having a crocodile. Didn’t he swallow a clock?” She strained her ears momentarily, pretended to listen for ticking.  
  
“Mm,” Regina hummed, looking unconvinced. There was a very faint glow to the water around her and Emma wondered, not for the first time, if magic simply seeped out of her. The glow highlighted a few freckles, faint on Regina’s olive-skinned shoulders, that Emma had never seen before.  
  
A few unbearably awkward seconds passed in silence with Emma trying not to look at the curvy outline that she could just make out underwater. “Aren’t you cold?” she finally asked, the effort she was putting into treading water not quite enough to keep out the chill.  
  
“I’m a witch,” Regina said serenely.  
  
At Emma’s lost expression, Regina looked indulgent. With a flick of her hand the faint glow in the water around her spread. The water around Emma warmed to practically balmy and she sank into it like a warm bath.  
  
“Oh, hell yeah.” Emma groaned, almost forgetting to keep her arms crossed. Regina smirked.  
  
They were drifting towards an outcropping of shore with the subtle tide. A smooth rock brushed Emma’s foot and she perched on it, steadying herself. Regina seemed to have done the same because she was standing quite still.  
  
“Did you have baths in the enchanted forest?” Emma asked to fill the silence.  
  
Regina looked out over the water, trailing her fingers over the surface. Little golden whispers of magic rippled through the dark water, spindling and arcing up like fairy lights. “Yes, once I was royalty.” The magic illuminated her lips, softer without lipstick to outline them, and her unreadable eyes. “Baths were usually reserved for the wealthy and their consorts.”  
  
Emma examined Skull Rock, eerie on the horizon, and tried not to sound overly interested when she asked, “You had consorts?”  
  
“Most queens and kings had consorts, dear. Comes with the territory.”  
  
“So...what happened to them?” Emma asked against her better judgement. She knew absolutely that she did not want to know. “Your lovers?”  
  
Regina looked down, and the magic in her fingertips died. The timbre of her voice grew low, her eyes lost. “The same thing that happened to everyone that got close to me when I was the queen.”  
  
Emma felt herself going pale as she imagined sticky ends for those ill-fated enough to be chosen by Regina. Imprisoned, banished, maybe even dead. “Even...even if you liked them?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.  
  
Regina fixed her with a hard stare. “Especially if I liked them.”  
  
For an instant she could see the Evil Queen in the hard lines of Regina’s face, a woman who’d forgotten how to breathe without revenge scorching her lungs. Then dark eyes blinked and Regina was her haunted self again, gaze downcast and something painful twisting in her chest. Emma was unsurprised to realize that she could feel it, the remorse aching in her own heart.  
  
Regina whispered, “Remember Graham?”  
  
And Emma sighed. “Yeah, I do.”  
  
She looked out towards Skull Rock for a long moment, remembering the softness of Graham’s lips and the fear in his eyes. A part of her wished she could hate Regina for it. It would be easier to hate her.  
  
But she felt pain radiating off the woman beside her, so sincere and bone-deep that it threatening to swallow them both whole.  
  
So she forced a smile and said, “I know I’m not a consort or whatever, but I am naked and within ten feet of you, so, if you could not kill me after this I would really appreciate it.”  
  
There was an awkward pause, then Regina laughed. That tightness in Emma’s chest eased when his son’s other mother chuckled, rolled her eyes, and they found themselves once again on familiar ground.  
  
“No promises,” Regina drawled, flicking a few droplets of water into Emma’s face.  
  
Emma retaliated on instinct, sending a splash of water that was maybe a little-too-enthusiastic directly into Regina’s face. It left her dark hair dripping and for one horrifying moment there was murder in the former queen’s eyes, a familiar purple glow, but Emma barely had time to be afraid before she was was slammed from behind by an honest-to-god wave that had appeared out of nowhere in a perfectly still lagoon, drenching her from head to toe.  
  
Emma came up laughing, spluttering, and nearly forgot to stay far enough under the surface to preserve her modesty. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like this, not since Neverland, and Regina was smiling bright and light and just a little deviously back at her.  
  
She was gorgeous, the shimmering magic reflected off the disturbed surface of the lake highlighting the angles of her face, and Emma found that she couldn’t look away.  
  
A few heartbeats passed in pleasurable silence before Regina turned and said, out of nowhere, “You are making this very difficult for me, Miss Swan.”  
  
She had that strange look again, the one that sometimes stole over Regina when she thought no one was looking. It was an incomprehensible mix of pain and hunger; like a woman in the desert who had spotted a mirage, unable to stop staring, to stop longing, but absolutely certain the water would vanish at her touch.  
  
“How’s that?” Emma asked.  
  
Regina looked at her appraisingly and said, her features drawn, “For all your obvious flaws you are surprisingly difficult to hate.”  
  
Emma barked out a laugh, pushing her wet hair back out of her face and stretched in the warm water. “Coming from you, Regina, that’s practically a compliment.”  
  
But there was that pinched expression, the one Emma knew meant Regina was deciding how much of her self-proclaimed black heart to reveal. “Miss Swan,” she finally said with a sigh, “I have run on nothing but loathing for decades. Sometimes I imagine I exist purely out of spite.”  
  
Emma stared at her, moonlight reflected bright in her eyes and water droplets sliding down the bridge of her nose, and said, “Pretty sure the only reason I ever made anything of myself was to prove other people wrong.” She remembered foster parents who’d sent her packing, tossing her back like a fish that was too small to cook, and ached with an old pain. “Trust me, I get it.”  
  
“For a time,” Regina said, fixing her with an agonized look that Emma didn’t quite understand, “I hated you most of all.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Emma said, surprised at how much it didn’t matter to her anymore. “Pretty sure that’s a requirement of the whole mortal enemies gig.”  
  
“True.” Regina tilted her head, looking at Emma with a half-curious, half-strained expression. “I don’t know what to make of you now, Emma Swan.”  
  
There was a heavy pause, in which Emma realized Regina had drifted closer. Her own foot slipped from its algae-smooth stone and Emma wobbled, trying not to go under in the dark water. When she straightened back up Regina was startlingly close, her eyelashes long and lovely in the starlight and that scar deep set above her lips. Emma’s eyes caught on that delicate imperfection and she swallowed hard.  
  
“You can still hate me,” Emma said a little too loudly, visited suddenly by the furious need to move, to speak, to do anything to stop herself from leaning over and kissing the frown from Regina’s lips. “I’m cool with it.” She cleared her throat and said, rather weakly, “I can be terrible if that will help.”  
  
“Can you now?” the other woman drawled.  
  
“Alphas rule, Omegas drool?” Emma tried. Regina snorted and Emma curled her fingers in an exaggerated hook. “Pirates are sexy and Snow for president?”  
  
“Nice try, Savior.”  
  
Emma licked her lips, strangely aware of her pulse and the sudden scent of anticipation in the air. Regina’s shoulders were bare, the very top expanse of her chest visible through the water, and it was difficult not to stare. Emma forced her gaze upwards and found eyes, dark and captivating, and imagined breathing something new and bright into Regina's lungs.  
  
“I knew, you know.” Regina spoke in a low, dangerously intimate voice, the kind of voice that told Emma she should run before they both did something they would regret, but her feet were not moving. She could almost feel Regina’s heart, beating heavy and hard in her chest like a war drum.  
  
“Knew what?” Emma whispered.  
  
When Regina reached out and cupped her cheek, touched her skin-to-skin for the first time in Neverland, Emma gasped. The touch shot a jolt of desire through her that rooted her to the spot, that sparked and lit behind her eyes like fireworks. She inhaled sharply, struggling to breathe as a thumb swept over her cheek.  
  
“That Henry was yours, the son of the Savior,” Regina murmured. Darkness suited her, Emma thought. She wore the night like a cloak, speckled with moonlight and faintly reflected stars. “I knew that he would bring my downfall and an end to the curse.”  
  
“You were surprised,” Emma said, feeling more and more unsteady by the second. Regina’s touch had drifted, the pad of her thumb soft at the corner of Emma’s lips, and her gaze was tender. “When I came to town, you were surprised.”  
  
“I found out when he was a baby,” Regina whispered, “but by then it was too late. I already loved him.” Those brown eyes were soft, soft in the way they always were when she spoke of Henry, and the look pierced right into Emma’s heart. “I made myself drink a forgetting draft. I didn’t want my…” Regina’s eyes flickered down, then up again, “my fear of you to stop me from loving him completely.”  
  
Emma’s voice, when it came, was almost too soft to hear. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”  
  
A little thrill shot through her when Regina inhaled, so near she could feel the air move, and curled her fingers around Emma’s jaw.  
  
One second she was looking into that familiar, hungry expression, and the next Regina was kissing her.  
  
The kiss sent a wave of what might have been very real magic down Emma’s spine, raising the fine hairs all over her body. There was a split second of hesitation, of absolute terror with Regina’s lips on hers. Then she was clasping both Regina’s cheeks and kissing her desperately, fiercely, throwing herself into it like she didn’t care if they ever came up for air.  
  
The rocks beneath them were slick, the faint tide threatening to tip them, so Emma tugged until they were stumbling up the bank, still connected by the hands and every few breaths by the lips. Emma was high, far too high to remember all the reasons that they shouldn’t be doing this, and the feel of Regina’s hands at her neck—her nails sharp and unyielding, as if Emma were something she’d caught and would never release—was more intoxicating than any drink.  
  
She managed to back Regina up against a tree and stabilize herself on a bare, faintly-freckled shoulder, and when the kiss broke she could see the other woman completely for the first time. She was a perfect expanse of olive skin and smooth curves, unfamiliar dark nipples and the neat patch of hair between her legs catching Emma’s eye, before the other woman’s expression took her in completely.  
  
Regina's face and hair were dripping and there was something almost feral in her expression, something dangerous in the purple glow of her irises and in the magic which crackled through the air. In that moment Regina looked for all the world like she would claw her way out of hell for one more moment of this, and Emma remembered all at once that she was kissing something between a woman and a force of nature.  
  
Then they were kissing again and Regina's lips were moving downwards. A scorchingly hot tongue traced Emma's collarbone with unbearable softness, followed by the possessive nip of teeth, and Emma was melting.  
  
Regina flipped them in one deft movement, a hand in Emma’s hair to stop her head from hitting the tree. Emma reached, tugged, and then Regina was finally pressed against her, their legs intertwining and chests brushing, and Emma heard a hiss and groan that may or may not have been her. She was acutely aware of every inch of skin but desperate to be closer, every nerve in her body screaming to slide down the smooth plane of Regina’s stomach to where her thighs met because Emma could _smell_ her, already wet.  
  
And Emma was ready, absolutely ready to drop to her knees and lick Regina like she was made for it, to kiss her until she screamed, but Regina wouldn't let her go. The hands at her throat held her, kept her upright, and the other woman smelled so impossibly, intoxicatingly good that it took her several seconds to realize that the warmth that was Regina had gone, backing up with a look of horror her face.  
  
Emma shivered and heaved a great breath. “What’s wrong? Who’s here?” She spun in place, fists ready to swing, but they were completely alone. It was just her and Regina and the heat that was threatening to devour them both. Emma wanted, very badly, to be devoured. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Oh, god,” Regina hissed, “it’s not supposed to be now.” She wrapped her arms around her chest, and there was a definite note of panic in her voice. She snapped her fingers and their clothing appeared at their feet. She started dressing rapidly, her skin disappearing inch by inch before Emma’s eyes. “This island. You...”  
  
“Regina,” she asked, stepping forward, “what-”  
  
“Stop!” Regina held out a hand between them, the fear and magic rolling off her so powerfully Emma was thrown back. She hit the forest floor hard, stunned and blinking at the sky. She sat up to watch Regina lower her hand shakily and say, “I’m...I’m sorry.”  
  
“Regina, what the hell is going on?” Emma stayed put, her voice softening at the wild look in Regina’s eyes. “You look terrified.”  
  
”I need you to listen very carefully.” Regina did up the last few buttons of her blouse and Emma wondered if it was her imagination or if the other woman’s sweat was getting sweeter, like perfume in the air. “We will split up, but I don’t think it will be enough. This island is too small and I don’t have materials to brew a suppressant.”  
  
Regina looked as though she were on the verge of tears, and Emma wanted so badly to reached out for her, to hold her, but was stopped by the sheer terror in Regina’s eyes. She could almost feel it, the heart beating rabbit-fast in the other woman’s chest.  
  
“So,” Regina continued, dressed from head to toe but looking for all the world as if she were the one who was naked, “you’re going to have to remember what I’m about to tell you, even when it feels impossible.”  
  
“This island is too small for what?” Emma stood up, stripped to the skin and caked in mud, but far too worried to care. She could feel Regina’s eyes on her, half hungry and half horrified.  
  
“To get away from you,” Regina said. “Emma, I’m going into heat. We seem to have,” she gestured vaguely between them, “jump-started it.”  
  
Emma felt the color draining from her face. “That’s a thing?  
  
“Apparently.” Regina grimaced, and her voice broke when she said, “I need you to try very hard to...not to…”  
  
“You need me,” Emma said weakly, realization dawning and turning her cold, “to not fuck you.”  
  
“Omegas have no control during heats. I won’t be able to say no to you, to anyone. In fact, much the opposite.” Regina was visibly shaking, but her eyes were steely when she looked Emma in the eye and said, “But I am telling you right now, with my mind intact, I do not consent. Not now, not like that.”  
   
“Okay,” Emma said quietly. The smell was getting stronger and she could feel her own body reacting, the blood thrumming heavy through her veins. Speaking, even thinking, was becoming difficult with Regina so close. “Okay, I hear you and I won’t. I promise.” At the look in Regina’s eyes she swallowed and said, “Regina I’m not going to do anything to you, I swear.”  
  
Regina stepped forward and brushed her shaking fingers over Emma’s cheek. When she spoke it was in a broken whisper. “I wish I could believe you.”  
  
Then she was gone in a puff of purple smoke, her scent lingering tantalizingly behind her, and Emma was alone.  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a thousand thanks to [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/) for the edits! Someday I will learn how punctuation works. 
> 
> (If you like my fic, you might also enjoy my [fic tumblr](http://www.nookiepoweredfic.tumblr.com) or my [original fiction](http://www.dreasilvertooth.com).)


End file.
